‘Yawn. Karma wins the day’: Jan. 6 rioter receives full pardon only to be fatally shot by sheriff’s deputy days later

Life comes at you fast. One day you’re strolling down the street, a presidential pardon clutched in your hand, a song in your heart, and a smile on your face. The next day? You’re a corpse in the street with a cop standing over you holding a smoking pistol.

This is precisely what happened to Jan. 6 rioter Matthew Huttle, 42, one of the many people convicted after entering the Capitol Building on one of the darkest days for American democracy in decades. Huttle, along with his uncle, Dale, were arrested soon after the riot, with the FBI reporting he’d entered multiple offices in the Capitol and was pictured in a black mask as other rioters tussled with cops.

Huttle was sentenced to six months in federal prison and 12 months on supervised release, with Donald Trump fully pardoning him for his actions soon after returning to the White House. For most, this would represent a fresh start, or at least a future without a criminal conviction hanging around their neck.

Unfortunately for Huttle, Trump’s signature on a pardon couldn’t stop a bullet. On Jan. 26 2025, he was stopped on State Road 14 by a Jasper County Sheriff’s deputy. An altercation followed and the deputy attempted to arrest Huttle, resulting in an altercation that ended with Huttle being shot dead. Many parts of the story are unclear: we don’t know what the traffic stop was for, and we don’t know if Huttle threatened (or appeared to threaten) the deputy’s life. We do know he was in possession of a firearm. As per procedure, the deputy has been placed on leave and an investigation is underway.

However, we do know quite a bit about Huttle’s life from his Jan. 6 sentencing hearing, and it’s grim reading. His attorney painted a picture of a man who wasn’t a die-hard MAGA acolyte and had just gained his freedom after a driving offense, going to the rally “because it would be a historic moment, and he had nothing better to do after getting out of jail.”

Huttle — a father of two — was also an alcoholic, drinking 12-18 beers each day, which his lawyer described as “extreme alcohol abuse.” He’d previously been shot in the knee, suffered multiple chronic health problems linked to his drinking, and been attacked with a hammer and baseball bat by a former partner’s boyfriend. It’s a depressing tale, though over on social media sympathy is in short supply:

Is this really “instant” karma?

Huttle doesn’t sound like he lived a great life and it doesn’t sound like he was much fun to be around, but perhaps crowing over his death at the hands of a cop isn’t a particularly productive thing to do. After all, the police being able to execute anyone they perceive as even a mild threat to them is not a good thing for anybody and is disproportionately used against minorities and vulnerable people.

Is there a moral here? Some might see this as karma, but in reality this appears to be the sad saga of an impressionable man with little going on in his life except beer, a toxic family life, and mental health problems, all crashing headlong into a cop with an itchy trigger finger. It looks like few people are mourning Huttle, but we suspect he won’t be the first pardoned Jan. 6 rioter to run foul of killer cops.