The incident, which was caught on video, happened in Baltimore in May 2023.
Prosecutors wanted a lengthy sentence for 28-year-old Patrick Brice, whom Baltimore Circuit Judge Yvette M. Bryant found guilty of two counts of second-degree assault and reckless endangerment.
The Baltimore Banner reports that Brice thought one of the elderly victims made a racial remark.
"I just snapped," he said.
Instead of prison time, Brice was ordered to undergo anger management classes, be screened for drugs and alcohol, and face home detention for one year.
Pointing out that the government throws the book at pro-lifers when they are accused of something, Noah Brandt of Live Action says that "slap on the wrist" is completely political and a total dereliction of justice.
He recalls, for example, that Biden's Department of Justice raided the home of Mark Houck when he was accused of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. Houck was later acquitted.
Meanwhile, federal, state, and local governments were silent as pro-life pregnancy resource centers were vandalized in the wake of the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade.
"This judge just made a real error," Brandt says about the Baltimore sentencing. "One of the victims was knocked unconscious. The other suffered broken facial bones and permanent eye damage. This was not a trivial incident, and that's how this judge is treating it."
Thomas Brejcha, attorney for Thomas More Society, the law firm representing the victims, agrees.
"This was not a minor altercation between two parties with differing views on abortion. It was a vicious, targeted assault on two senior citizens whose only 'offense' was praying for expectant mothers and offering life-affirming alternatives to abortion," Brejcha stated in a press release.
"This was an act of cowardice and cruelty and sheer mayhem," he continued. "This crime deserves far more serious consequences than a 'get out of jail free' card and a one-year home detention that amounts to nothing more than a slap on the wrist."
One of the victims' attorneys told local news that he knew Judge Bryant would not sentence jail time for a crime like this.
