The North Carolina man who live-streamed threats in 2021 to detonate alleged explosives in his truck parked on a sidewalk blocks from the US Capitol was sentenced to five years probation Friday after a judge found the man had been suffering from a significant psychiatric episode at the time.
Floyd Roseberry, who pleaded guilty in January to threatening to use explosives, spent a year behind bars in Washington, DC.
During Friday’s hearing, Judge Rudolph Contreras said that an expert for the court found that medication Roseberry was on at the time can cause psychiatric episodes for an individual diagnosed – as Roseberry had been – with bipolar disorder.
The judge noted the expert said it was unlikely that Roseberry would have committed his crime were he not on the incorrectly prescribed medication.
Contreras said that the crime was “shocking,” especially in the wake of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol that same year, but noted that Roseberry’s claims at the time that he could have blown up two city blocks and had co-conspirators stationed around DC were entirely false.
The judge also praised Roseberry for intervening to protect a DC prison guard who was attacked from behind by a fellow inmate before Roseberry grabbed the assailant.
The guard suffered a broken jaw from the attack, according to Contreras, and as a result of his actions in protecting the guard, inmates later threw feces and urine at Roseberry.
“This selfless act … further indicates his lack of danger to the community,” Contreras said.
Before being sentenced, Roseberry told the judge that he was put on the wrong medication before the incident after being overwhelmed by the loss of several family members and attempting to kill himself.
“If I had been on the correct medication, this never would have happened,” Roseberry said, expressing that he was sorry for what he did and later noting how horrible his time in the DC jail had been.
Roseberry’s wife, who was in the audience during the hearing, “takes good care of him,” Contreras said, adding that she was staying on top of his new medication.
“I’m very optimistic that that was the worst day of your life,” Contreras said, adding that if anything like it happened again, Roseberry would not find the judge “so accommodating.”
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