A transgender rioter received a “time served” sentence on Friday after waving a butcher knife at federal officers outside Portland, Oregon’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building and throwing it, court documents show.
Julie Winters, formerly Christopher Hudson, pleaded guilty to intimidating a federal officer and resisting arrest over a June protest at the facility and a subsequent scuffle in August at a Pretrial Services Office, according to court records. A Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney wrote Dec. 10 that he was “surprised” to see Winters’ release on supervision after four months in custody, initially believing he would serve six, which would still be a light punishment under U.S. sentencing guidelines.
“The defendant rages against authority and struggled on supervision. Her criminal history surrounds assaults and threats to law enforcement,” the DOJ wrote in a sentencing memo.
Winters approached the ICE building, waved the twelve-inch knife back and forth at officers and tossed it in a sidearm throw toward the direction of one officer when they told him to put it down, according to the DOJ. “The officer believes that the defendant threw the knife at his head, but missed,” the DOJ wrote.
The defendant’s attorney claimed in a sentencing memo that he merely threw the knife at property next to the ICE facility, calling the DOJ’s story “misleading.” But he tried to pull out a second knife at the protest while under arrest, the DOJ said, providing a picture of the other weapon.
The 47-year-old arrestee was one of 11 leftist protesters in Portland this year who had a prior arrest in Multnomah County, a Daily Caller News Foundation report found. An Obama-appointed judge freed him from jail after the protest, and he continued causing trouble for law enforcement, court records show.
After his June arrest, Winters appeared at the Pretrial Services Office to be admonished about violating release conditions, according to court documents. He then “bull-rushed” a pair of U.S. Marshals who arrived to arrest him and struggled with them “for several minutes,” leading to the assault charge he later pleaded guilty to. He had a mental health episode later that day, attempted suicide in custody and began fighting the Marshals again when they tried to provide medical assistance, yelling, “You’re trying to kill me!” the DOJ said.
Winters’ criminal convictions also included a 2011 incident when he started a bar fight in Portland and when he provided a false name to officers arresting him in Nebraska in 2014 while he appeared intoxicated. He is still facing state-level assault charges over an alleged fight with a police officer at the scene of a traffic accident, the DOJ noted.
“The defendant is the cause of every one of these violent encounters … She is someone out looking for a violent confrontation, claims a loose association with Antifa, or as she said in one of her social media posts, ‘a fucking Jihad needs to begin and we need to make it happen,’” the DOJ wrote. “These are claims of someone that is either seeking a violent revolution or, more likely, someone dealing with significant mental health issues.”
Winters’ attorney countered that the state assault case is pending.
“Ms. Winters agrees with the government and the presentence report writer that a time-served sentence is appropriate,” the lawyer wrote.
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