Attorney argues sentencing doesn’t fit crime for New York pro-lifer’s FACE Act violation

On July 24, pro-life advocate Bevelyn Williams was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison for allegedly violating the FACE Act during a two-day protest outside of a New York City Planned Parenthood facility in June of 2020. 

This is the second-longest sentence in a series of recent FACE Act-related convictions. Lauren Handy, who was convicted in a FACE Act trial in Washington, D.C., in August of last year, is the only defendant to have been given a longer sentence – in her case, 57 months.

Williams and her co-defendant, Edmee Chavannes, were originally indicted on December 16, 2022, for “violating the FACE Act through force, threats of force, and physical obstruction, resulting in bodily harm” and conspiracy to violate the FACE Act, according to a Department of Justice (DOJ) press release. On November 8, 2023, Williams was acquitted of the conspiracy charge but found guilty of the FACE Act violation. Chavannes was acquitted on both charges. 

Williams — who in the four years since the New York City protest has gotten married and become a mother to a now two-year-old little girl — was blindsided by the length of the sentence she was given. In a conversation with Live Action News following her sentencing hearing, Williams said she knew of another recent case in which a woman convicted of PPP-loan related fraud totaling millions of dollars received just over one year in prison – a significantly lesser sentence than her own.

“It just shows you what their priorities are,” Williams commented.

Comparison to Recent Convictions in Washington, D.C.

In attempting to calculate the appropriate length of Williams’ sentence, U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Rochon took into account Williams’ previous convictions for minor offenses – which happened nearly a decade ago, before Williams became a Christian. 

Judge Rochon also referred to the length of the sentences imposed in the recent D.C. FACE Act cases, which ranged from 21 months to 57 months.

However, an important difference between the D.C. convictions and Williams’ conviction is that the defendants in the former case were all convicted of “conspiracy against rights” charges. Williams was acquitted of conspiracy to violate the FACE Act. 

Attorney Aaron J. Mysliwiec initially represented Chavannes and is now representing Williams during her appeal process. Speaking to Live Action News following Williams’ sentencing, Mysliwiec agreed that Williams’ acquittal of her conspiracy charge “should be a meaningful distinction” between her case and those of the D.C. defendants, “given that prosecutors often argue that a violation of a statute with a conspiracy is a more significant and more serious offense” than a statute violation on its own.

Mysliwiec said that it is common for judges to look to other, similar cases for guidance on appropriate sentence length. But he also pointed out that there have been many recent FACE Act convictions, not merely those of the D.C. defendants – and those other convictions resulted in considerably shorter sentences. 

In Tennessee, for example, where several defendants were convicted of both FACE Act and “conspiracy against rights” violations (like the D.C. defendants), only one individual was sentenced to actual prison time – totaling a mere six months. 

Similarly, pro-life activist priest Father Fidelis was recently convicted of violating the FACE Act in New York and was sentenced to just six months in prison. “You could argue that [Williams’] case is actually less serious than [Fidelis’] case,” Mysliwiec noted, “because there was no chaining or barricading of an entrance the way that [Fidelis] did.”

In other words, even by comparison to most other recent FACE Act convictions, the sentence given to Bevelyn Williams appears to be severe.

Alleged Injury Sustained by Facility Employee

During Williams’ sentencing hearing, both government attorney Mitzi Steiner and Judge Rochon asserted that a comparison to the D.C. case was appropriate, because both involved alleged injuries to employees of the respective abortion facilities involved. In Washington, D.C., a nurse allegedly sprained her ankle, whereas at the New York City Planned Parenthood protest in which Williams participated, a staff member’s hand was allegedly caught in a door, which government prosecutors portrayed as an intentional act on Williams’ part.

Mysliwiec, however, presented a different perspective, pointing out that the New York Police Department (NYPD) “was on the scene in this case… They saw what happened, and if they had decided that there was a[n] assault that had occurred… they could have interceded and made an arrest.” However, the NYPD declined to do so.

Mysliwiec also noted that the alleged injury in this case was relatively minor. “This wasn’t an allegation of a broken bone or a serious physical injury that exists for a long period of time after [the incident] or [an] injury that can’t be fixed.” 

Given these facts, Mysliwiec asserted that even if NYPD had chosen to arrest Wiliams, “under New York law, this would be a misdemeanor assault charge at worst[.]” He told Live Action News that, in his experience with the New York State criminal justice system, “More times than not, those types of cases are reduced from misdemeanors to non-criminal offenses, to something called a harassment violation. And if they’re not reduced,” he continued, “for the type of injury alleged in this case,  the sentence is almost always probation or time served.”

Furthermore, Mysliwiec pointed out that “in order for [the alleged assault] to be a violation of the FACE Act,” the government would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Williams “intentionally [tried] to injure someone because the person was engaged in providing reproductive health services.” In this case, “an employee from Planned Parenthood,” knowing that Williams was standing in front of it, “opened the door on [Williams’] back, the door rebounded, [and] that woman had her hand caught in the door,” Mysliwiec stated.

Even if Williams had intentionally pushed back against the door, Mysliwiec said, “there’s still a difference between doing it because somebody just smacked you with the door versus doing it because you want to intimidate, interfere, or injure them because that person is associated with reproductive health,” which are the criteria for FACE Act violations. “Those are entirely different questions,” Mysliwiec stated, adding, “I submit that there’s a failure of proof on each one of those issues, and that Ms. Williams’ conviction should be overturned.”

Politicized Prosecutions?

Data recently analyzed by The Daily Caller strongly suggests that the Biden administration’s DOJ has weaponized the FACE Act – which is written in such a way so as to protect pro-life pregnancy centers and churches in addition to abortion facilities – in order to target pro-life activists for draconian prosecution. As Live Action News previously reported:

Prosecutions of pro-life individuals constitute roughly 97% of all FACE Act cases… from 1994 to 2024, there were 205 cases brought against pro-lifers and just six against pro-abortion activists. At least 55 of those were prosecuted by the Biden DOJ, only five of which involved attacks by abortion advocates — despite FBI Director Christopher Wray’s testimony that 75% of all abortion-related attacks following the overturning of Roe were carried out by abortion supporters against pro-life organizations.

In his conversation with Live Action News about Williams’ case specifically, Mysliwiec noted the length of time it took for the DOJ to begin its investigation. The protest in which Williams participated occurred on June 19th and 20th of 2020, however, according to Mysliwiec, “The first real steps towards investigation and prosecution of this case happened some number of weeks after the Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court.” 

This is in spite of the fact that New York State Attorney General Letitia James sued Williams and Chavannes in response to their protest actions at the New York City Planned Parenthood – a case which was widely publicized and settled in April of 2021, over a year before the DOJ opened its investigation.

“It seems clear from the tea leaves that what happened,” Mysliwiec observed, “is that [the] DOJ decided in the wake of Dobbs to search out and prosecute a number of cases that they thought were FACE Act violations, whereas before Dobbs, they didn’t view them as serious enough to prosecute.” 

Mysliwiec argued that the DOJ’s actions “obviously ring[] of a political prosecution…. As a policy matter, there’s something that certainly strikes me as fundamentally wrong” he added, “that the reason you decide to prosecute a case is not because of the conduct of the individuals, it’s because you don’t like a decision that came down from the Supreme Court of the United States.”

The First Amendment and the Right to Protest

Attorneys for the government argued that language used by Williams and Chavannes at the protest constituted evidence for a FACE Act violation. According to a DOJ press release, Williams used ‘threatening’ language such as “We are going to terrorize this place” and “It’s a warzone.”

However, Mysliwiec noted that these phrases were “essentially biblical quotes.” He pointed out that, although this could be called “inflammatory language,” Williams’ and Chavannes’ actions clearly demonstrated that their words were merely “rhetorical.” 

Williams and Chavannes were “clearly engaged in First Amendment activity,” Mysliwiec said, observing that they were “not threatening anyone with weapons, not chaining themselves to doors[.]” He added: “First Amendment speech doesn’t require you to be meek and modest. You are allowed to be loud and proud in somebody’s face and say things in a way that makes them uncomfortable.”

“Regardless of whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, progressive or a centrist – no matter who you are, you should care about the freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association principles that are so important as a constitutional matter,” Mysliwiec said. 

“If you support the right of protest and for people to speak their minds and try to persuade people,” he concluded, “this is an important case.”