Conspiracy to riot gets them three days in jail and a year of probation. This is how its going to go for the rest. And where’s Graham Whitsom?

It only took an hour for a jury to convict the five Patriot Front members Thursday for conspiring to disrupt a Pride celebration last June in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. And even though judge withheld judgement against them, they have some time to serve.  They were the first among the 31 arrested that day to be convicted and it signals what awaits the remaining 26 others still awaiting trial.

Devin Center, James J. Johnson, Forrest Rankin, Robert Whitted and Derek Smith showed no emotion on Thursday after a clerk read the guilty verdict to the charge of conspiracy to riot by disturbing the peace. On Friday, Judge James Stow sentenced them to three days in jail and will have one-year of unsupervised probation. They are also not allowed to go within two miles of the Coeur d’Alene City Park during the probation.

On June 11, 2022 the Patriot Front members were arrested as they attempted to crash “Pride in the Park” an annual event held in the same park that Aryan Nations held rallies when they were headquartered in the area decades before. Local fascists threated an armed counter demonstration to the event which had put many in the community on alert and brought many out to protect the event. Patriot Front was not expected to be there and many stood and laughed as they were being arrested.

Some of those convicted on Thursday were either known beforehand or became known after their arrests. Rankin was an Engineer in Training before his arrest and subsequently lost that position. James J. Johnson, who went by the name “Tyler WA,” was known amongst antifascists as one who would often openly talk about ghost guns and participating in Patriot Front actions while armed, both violating Patriot Front rules and almost costing his Washington State chapter to be shuttered. In February, an arrest warrant was issued for him after he failed to appear at his pretrial conference. Devin Center who went by the name “Nathan AR,” was outed by Atlanta Antifascists as one of the Patriot Front members who defaced a Black Lives Matter/Stop Asian Hate mural in Atlanta in September 2021, the other being Graham Whitsom, another arrested member who remains at large after a bench warrant was issued for his arrest after not appearing at his pretrial conference and out of the five that received such warrants over the past year is the only one that has not been found. Smith, who was convicted this week and Connor Patrick Moran returned to court weeks after their warrants were issued.

The fifth, Jared Michael Boyce, is currently serving a year in jail in Utah after he pled guilty to sexual exploitation of a minor, charges that stem from his Idaho arrest when the FBI searched images of his phone a month after the arrests and found children engaging in sex acts. He was one of two Patriot Front arrestees that found themselves in other legal entanglements since their arrests in Idaho. The other was Steven Derrick Tucker, who immediately was out on bail in Texas He was accused of allegedly threatening a Hispanic man he was reportedly dating and living with in Mesquite, TX with a knife, saying “I will fucking kill you” during an argument over dirty dishes. He was sent back to jail after his arrest but in August of last year pleaded guilty and is currently serving a two year probation sentence. 

Rioting is a misdemeanor in Idaho. Conspiracy to riot is punishable by up to one year in jail, as well as a $5,000 fine and up to two years of probation.