As U.S. District Senior Judge Royce Lamberth of the District of Columbia prepared to issue the first sentence for a defendant charged in the riots at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, he knew that others would be looking to him for direction on how to act in the future.

“I really have struggled with what would be an appropriate sentence in a case like yours,” he told the defendant, Anna Morgan-Lloyd, a 49-year-old grandmother from Indiana, before sentencing her to 36 months of probation.