Coralville man gets over 6 years for Muscatine County Jail officer assault

A Coralville man who associated with a “white supremacist prison gang” was sentenced last week in federal court to over six years for assaulting a Muscatine County Jail officer in 2023.

According to court documents, Jorey Daniel Karl Butterbaugh, 33, pleaded guilty in May in U.S. District Court to assault on a person assisting a federal officer in Nov. 13, 2023. He was still serving his federal sentence on a conviction of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and possession of a firearm.

While pending transport to a federal prison, Butterbaugh was in custody at the Muscatine County Jail. He assaulted the jail officer while the officer was conducting an internal investigation of contraband within the jail.

According to sentencing document, Butterbaugh attacked the officer from behind, striking him multiple times before the officer could see what was happening.

“This escalation of violence over something so small showed Defendant’s callousness to the cost of his violence,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kaitlyn Macaulay said in a brief.

She asked the court to sentence Butterbaugh to the top of the sentencing guideline range — 96 months. Instead, the judge sentenced him to 78 months. She cited several previous convictions and said he had been involved with violence in and out of incarceration, including associating with the supremacist prison gang.

The judge ran this sentence consecutively to his other 12-year sentence in his firearm and drug conviction.

This case was investigated by the U.S. Marshals Service and Muscatine County Sheriff’s Office.

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