{"id":102738,"date":"2024-06-28T13:50:16","date_gmt":"2024-06-28T18:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=102738"},"modified":"2024-06-28T13:50:16","modified_gmt":"2024-06-28T18:50:16","slug":"102738","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=102738","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Justices rule for Jan. 6 defendant<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/23pdf\/23-5572_l6hn.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

The Supreme Court on Friday threw out the charges against a former Pennsylvania police officer who entered the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks. By a vote of 6-3, the justices ruled that the law that Joseph Fischer was charged with violating, which bars obstruction of an official proceeding, applies only to evidence tampering, such as destruction of records or documents, in official proceedings.<\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s ruling could affect charges against more than 300 other Jan. 6 defendants. The same law is also at the center of two of the four charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith against former President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court heard oral argument on April 25 on Trump\u2019s claims of immunity and has not yet issued its decision in that case. But Smith has argued that even if the court were to rule for Fischer, the charges against Trump could still go forward because they rested, in part, on efforts to use false electoral certificates at the joint session of Congress.<\/p>\n

The law at the center of Fischer\u2019s case is 18 U.S.C. \u00a7 1512(c)(2), which makes it a crime to \u201cotherwise obstruct[], influence[], or impede[] any official proceeding.\u201d U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols concluded that because the previous subsection, Section 1512(c)(1), bars tampering with evidence \u201cwith the intent to impair the object\u2019s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding,\u201d Section 1512(c)(2) only applies to cases involving evidence tampering that obstructs an official proceeding, and he dismissed the obstruction charge against Fischer.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed Nichols\u2019 ruling, concluding that the \u201cmeaning of the statute is unambiguous,\u201d so that it \u201capplies to all forms of corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding, other than the conduct that is already covered by\u201d the prior subsection.<\/p>\n

On Friday, the Supreme Court vacated the D.C. Circuit\u2019s decision, interpreting the law more narrowly to apply only to evidence tampering.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Roberts explained that the general principles used to construe statutes instruct courts that \u201ca general phrase can be given a more focused meaning by the terms linked to it.\u201d Here, he continued, subsection (c)(1) provides several specific examples of evidence tampering that the law prohibits \u2013 such as altering a record and concealing a document. When subsection (c)(2) immediately follows those examples, he reasoned, \u201cthe most sensible inference\u201d is that the scope of (c)(2) is limited by the examples in (c)(1). Indeed, he noted, if subsection (c)(2) sweeps as broadly as the government posits, \u201cthere would have been scant reason for Congress to provide any specific examples at all\u201d in subsection (c)(1).<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s expansive construction of subsection (c)(2) would have other effects as well, he suggested. It \u201cwould criminalize a broad swath of prosaic conduct, exposing activists and lobbyists alike to decades in prison.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the case returns to the D.C. Circuit, Roberts instructed, that court can reconsider the obstruction charge against Fischer \u201cin light of our interpretation of Section 1512(c)(2).\u201d<\/p>\n

Justice Amy Coney Barrett dissented, in an opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. The court, she wrote, veered from the text of the law; the majority \u201csimply cannot believe that Congress meant what it said.\u201d Although \u201cevents like January 6th\u201d may not have been the target of subsection (c)(2), Barrett acknowledged (noting in a parenthetical, \u201cWho could blame Congress for that failure of imagination?\u201d), she argued that the court should \u201cstick to the text\u201d when statutes \u201cgo further than the problem that inspired them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, here, she wrote, the court \u201cdoes textual backflips to find some way \u2013\u00a0any\u00a0<\/em>way \u2013 to narrow the reach of subsection (c)(2).\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland indicated that he was \u201cdisappointed\u201d by the ruling, but he stressed that \u201cthe vast majority of the more than 1,400 defendants charged for their illegal actions on January 6 will not be affected by this decision. There are no cases,\u201d Garland said, \u201cin which the Department charged a January 6 defendant only with the offense at issue in\u00a0Fischer.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Justices rule for Jan. 6 defendant https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/23pdf\/23-5572_l6hn.pdf The Supreme Court on Friday threw out the charges against a former Pennsylvania police officer who entered the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks. By a vote of 6-3, the justices ruled that the law that Joseph Fischer was charged with violating, which bars obstruction of … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,23,50,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucraps","category-courts","category-goobermint","category-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=102738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102739,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102738\/revisions\/102739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=102738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=102738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=102738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}