Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Thanks, Hadn't got there -- US supreme court ruling could make it harder to prosecute January 6 rioters – and Trump

Court rules prosecutors overstepped in bringing obstruction charges against Capitol rioters

Robert Tait and Sam Levine
Sat 29 Jun 2024 01.09 AEST
Last modified on Sun 30 Jun 2024 04.26 AEST

Voted with the: Majority Minority

Conservative bloc - Alito .. Barrett .. Gorsuch .. Kavanaugh .. Roberts .. Thomas

Liberal bloc - Jackson .. Kagan .. Sotomayor

The US supreme court has narrowed .. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-5572_l6hn.pdf .. the statute that prosecutors have relied on in the cases of hundreds of rioters who took part in the January 6 Capitol attack .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/us-capitol-breach .. for obstruction of an official proceeding – a ruling with profound implications for participants on that day in 2021.

The 6-3 ruling in the case of Fischer v United States could also affect the federal criminal case against Donald Trump, who is charged with similar offences in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the assault. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the conservative justices in the case, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing the majority opinion. Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote a dissenting opinion joined by Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

The decision stems from the conviction of Joseph Fischer, a former Pennsylvania police officer, who took part in Trump’s so-called “stop the steal” rally on the morning of January 6 before then entering the Capitol with the mob.

Fischer was one of about 350 people federal prosecutors charged under a federal statute, 18 USC section 1512(c)(2), which says any person who “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so” can be fined or punished with up to 20 years in prison. The 350 people charged with the crime represent about a quarter .. https://www.npr.org/2021/02/09/965472049/the-capitol-siege-the-arrested-and-their-stories .. of all those charged in connection with the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

The central question in the case was what kind of conduct exactly the language prohibited. The previous section of the law, 18 USC section 1512(c)(1), is more specific, saying anyone is guilty of a crime who “alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding”.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts zeroed in on the word “otherwise” in the second part of the statute.

“Complex as subsection (c)(1) may look, it simply consists of many specific examples of prohibited actions undertaken with the intent to impair an object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding: altering a record, altering a document, concealing a record, concealing a document, and so on,” he wrote. “Guided by the basic logic that Congress would not go to the trouble of spelling out the list in (c)(1) if a neighboring term swallowed it up, the most sensible inference is that the scope of (c)(2) is defined by reference to (c)(1).

[INSERT: Hang on. Isn't (c)(1) talking about documents or objects only while
(c)(2) is more about other actions of perpetrators. It's a first-look impression.]

“To prove a violation of Section 1512(c)(2), the Government must establish that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or as we earlier explained, other things used in the proceeding, or attempted to do so,” he added. The majority sent the opinion back to the court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit for further consideration.

Trump, meanwhile, faces four criminal charges in the case, one of which is a violation of 18 USC section 1512(c)(2). He is also charged with conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. His lawyers could now argue that those two charges fall under the narrower standard the supreme court announced Friday. Some experts have argued that the evidence against Trump would allow the charges to stick even under a narrower standard.

“It will be a much tougher case to argue that he impaired an official proceeding if the prosecution must also show that it related to the destruction or alteration, or related activities, of documents,” said Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame.

“It may be more about whether paperwork submitted to Pence relating to other electoral votes, or what to do with those votes, rises to the level of criminal activity in the statute. We’ll see whether the Department of Justice keeps this charge against Trump, but it may fall back to some of the other charges and rely more heavily on them instead.”

While the statute has been used to charge hundreds of people in January 6 cases, it rarely is the sole charge they face. The charge against Fischer, for example, was one of seven criminal charges filed against him.

Writing in dissent, Barrett said the majority had done “textual backflips to find some way – any way – to narrow the reach of subsection (c)(2)”.

“Joseph Fischer allegedly participated in a riot at the Capitol that forced the delay of Congress’s joint session on January 6th. Blocking an official proceeding from moving forward surely qualifies as obstructing or impeding the proceeding by means other than document destruction,” she wrote. “There is no getting around it: Section 1512(c)(2) is an expansive statute.”

[YAY. Exactly as i saw it, Justice Barrett.]

Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of the left-leaning watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the justices had helped “insurrectionists dodge accountability once again”.

“If attempting to block the certification of the 2020 election isn’t obstructing an official proceeding in the court’s eyes, then what is?” he said in a statement. “This is another example of the court failing to stand up for our democracy and enforce the plain text of the law.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/jun/28/supreme-court-january-6-rioters

Thanks, Zorax. Didn't know.

Out now.