A Maryland man was sentenced to one year in jail and fined $5,000 for throwing two large parties in violation of the state’s ban on gatherings of more than 10 people. Shawn Marshall Myers, 42, was convicted on Friday of two counts of failure to comply with an emergency order. Charles County Judge W. Louis Hennessy sentenced Myers to the maximum penalty on one count. The nonjury trial and sentencing came six months after Gov. Larry Hogan declared a state of emergency and put in place wide-ranging social distancing guidelines to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus.
Myers was arrested in March after the police responded to reports of two large parties five days apart at his home in Hughesville, a town of 2,000 in Southern Maryland. On March 22, Myers had around 50 people in his home, prosecutors said. They said he was “argumentative” with police officers, but eventually agreed to disband the gathering. On March 27, the police were called back to Myers’s house, where more than 50 people had gathered. Prosecutors said Myers was arrested after telling his guests to stay in defiance of the order and refused to cooperate with law enforcement officials despite attempts to reason with him. Last month, the Los Angeles city attorney charged two TikTok stars, Bryce Hall and Blake Gray, with misdemeanors, contending they threw mega-parties at their Hollywood Hills mansion in defiance of California’s social distancing orders.