A 29-year-old man who firebombed a Wisconsin pro-life group’s headquarters in May 2022 was sentenced to nearly eight years in prison this week after he was arrested last year.
Hridindu Roychowdhury was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison on Wednesday after he pled guilty in December 2023 to throwing two Molotov cocktails through the windows of a Wisconsin Family Action building in Madison. The attack came just a week after an early draft of a Supreme Court majority opinion leaked that indicated Roe v. Wade would be struck down. The phrase “If abortions aren’t safe then you aren’t either,” was also graffitied outside the building.
BREAKING: Somebody vandalized and allegedly threw Molotov cocktails into Wisconsin Family Action’s — an anti-abortion rights group — Madison office, writing w/ graffiti, “If abortions aren’t safe, then you aren’t either.”
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— Alexander Shur (@AlexanderShur) May 8, 2022
Federal Judge William William Conley, an Obama appointee, who sentenced Roychowdhury, could have given him up to 20 years in prison. Roychowdhury was arrested in Boston as he was attempting to fly out of the country.
“Roychowdhury’s arson was an act of domestic terrorism,” said U.S. Attorney Timothy O’Shea for the Western District of Wisconsin. “Domestic terrorism is cowardly and profoundly undemocratic. It is not speech; it is not an exchange of ideas; instead, it is an attempt to harm or frighten one’s fellow citizens, thus driving Americans apart and weakening the fabric of our democratic society.”
Members of Wisconsin Family Action were disappointed with the sentence after recommending that Roychowdhury get 15 years for the attack.
“We are disappointed,” said the group’s president emeritus Julaine Appling. “The court missed an opportunity to strengthen the protection of constitutional rights like free speech and free exercise, rights that have themselves been under assault in recent years. The defendant’s act of domestic terrorism to threaten our people, our families and friends, our neighbors, and our greater pro-life community is unconscionable. Ultimately, the defendant — and others who attacked pro-life groups they disagree with — attacked our civil society and the constitutional rights foundational to it.”
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Wisconsin Family Action President Christine File said that the sentence “lacks proportionality” for the crime.
“It is notable that nearly 60 people filled the courtroom to support this person who committed a violent, unprovoked, and hate-filled crime,” she said. “Will the society-of-tomorrow support terrorism intended to silence people with whom we disagree? But perhaps most concerning, in the two years since the attack the defendant did not at any point express remorse to the people he targeted and harmed — until the judge asked him.”
Six pro-lifers face over 10 years in prison over a peaceful protest at a Tennessee abortion facility after they were found guilty of a conspiracy against rights in February. They are being sentenced in July.