White nationalist sentenced to 3 months in jail after battering health care worker

White nationalist Kyle Chapman will spend the next three months in jail.

Fourth District Judge James Cawthon sentenced Chapman – a far-right leader who has advocated for a white ethnostate – to 90 days in jail last week after Chapman pleaded guilty to grabbing a health care professional multiple times against her will while being treated at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise.

The maximum punishment, under Idaho law, for battery against a health care worker is three years in prison.

In exchange for his guilty plea, Chapman was offered a plea deal through the Ada County Prosecutor’s Office, which dropped a secondary felony, a persistent violator charge, and shortened the amount of time he’d spend in prison. As part of the plea agreement, the prosecutor’s office could only ask for up to 90 days in jail, with a minimum of 30 days, spokesperson Emily Lowe previously told the Idaho Statesman by email.

Chapman was also placed on three-year felony probation and, as part of the plea agreement, can’t ask for an early release, Lowe told the Statesman on Tuesday. Chapman is also expected to pay $745.50 in court costs and a fine, plus roughly $5,615 in restitution.

In November 2021, Chapman was being treated for pneumonia when the health care worker was called into his room because he was having increased difficulty breathing, according to the Ada County Prosecutor’s Office. Chapman’s attorney, Daniel Betts, during the sentencing said he was under “great medical distress” and given his last rites, which is when a priest blesses a patient who may be on the verge of death.

While the woman was changing Chapman’s oxygen mask, he “grabbed her arm” and “called her a derogatory name,” Ada County Prosecutor Whitney Welsh previously said.

Chapman then grabbed her again, according to the prosecutor’s office. Welsh added that three witnesses – another health care worker and two security officers – were in the room during the incident, and if the case had gone to trial, all three of them would have testified “to corroborate these actions.”

Betts disputed the number of times Chapman grabbed her during the sentencing and said the witness in the room only saw him grab her once. Chapman previously told police that he felt “as though he was being harassed by medical staff members and was not receiving adequate care.”

Welsh read a victim impact statement from the health care worker during the sentencing. The health care worker said since the battery, she has had seizures and anxiety and contemplated leaving her job because of “fear of reliving an assault by an aggressive bully that feels he was actually (wronged) in this whole ordeal.”

“I did not want to be here today,” Welsh said, reading the health care worker’s statement. “Reliving this trauma feels like being victimized all over again. However, I do believe in the system of justice and the importance of sharing my story so that health care workers can hopefully be better protected in the course of doing their jobs and serving our community.”