A doctor from Ashland, Massachusetts, who pleaded guilty to attacking a police officer during the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot apologized as she was sentenced to nine months in prison Thursday.
Dr. Jacquelyn Starer must serve nine months of home confinement after her sentencing at a hearing in federal court in Washington, D.C.
Starer told U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly that she isn't proud of her actions that day, including her "regrettable encounter" with the officer.
"I accept full responsibility for my actions that day, and I truly wish reason had prevailed over my emotions," she said.
Starer also turned to apologize to the officer whom she assaulted. The officer, identified only by her initials in court filings, told the judge she feared for her life as she and other officers fought for hours to defend the Capitol from the mob of Donald Trump supporters.
"Do you really take responsibility for your actions or are you just going to say: 'It wasn't my fault. Fight or flight'?" the officer asked Starer before she addressed the court.
Prosecutors recommended a prison sentence of two years and three months for Starer, while her attorneys asked the judge to sentence her to home confinement instead of incarceration.
In April, Starer had pleaded guilty to two felony counts of civil disorder and assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for D.C. She also pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors: entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds or buildings, and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building.
Prosecutors have said Starer attended a "Stop the Steal" rally on Jan. 6, 2021, and was among a group of people who then forced their way into the U.S. Capitol through the East Rotunda Doors.
Around 3 p.m., Starer made her way to the front of the crowd to confront a line of Metropolitan Police Department and U.S. Capitol police officers who had formed a line to prevent the group from reaching the west entrance of the Capitol Rotunda, prosecutors said. Bodycam footage from a Metro police officer shows Starer punching an officer in the rotunda, and the officer who was struck told investigators that she remembered the incident and recognized the woman who hit her in the bodycam footage.
Starer also shouted expletives at the officers, according to the prosecution.
Starer was a practicing doctor from Ashland who worked at Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital at the time of her arrest in December 2022. Following that arrest, a representative for Brigham and Women's Hospital said she was "no longer active at our organization." She also served as the president of the Massachusetts Society of Addiction Medicine and had a clean disciplinary record, according to the state's Board of Registration in Medicine.
Online licensing records indicate that Starer agreed in January 2023 not to practice medicine in Massachusetts. The state issued her a medical license in 1983.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
