A split Supreme Court decided on Friday, overturning several convictions against rioters who interfered with the 2020 presidential election's certification, holding that federal prosecutors had falsely accused hundreds of defendants from January 6 of obstruction.
Following the assault on the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, federal prosecutors accused over 350 members of the pro-Trump crowd with blocking or hindering an official administrative action. Included under a statute passed after the discovery of widespread fraud and document destruction during the fall of the energy behemoth Enron, the crime carries a maximum punishment of 20 years.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who authored the majority opinion, said that prosecutors would have excessive discretion if they used the government's expansive interpretation of the legislation to seek sentences up to 20 years in length "for acts Congress saw fit to punish only with far shorter terms of imprisonment."
The government must prove that a defendant "impaired the availability or integrity" of records, papers, or other items utilized in an official procedure in order to invoke the law, he said.
The majority must do "textual backflips to find some way — any way — to narrow the reach" of the legislation, according to Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who dissents together with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
The decision on Friday might have an impact on the sentences and convictions of a small group of rioters, perhaps 27, who are incarcerated only for this offense.
Additionally, prosecutors say it may affect around 110 additional people who are awaiting trial or punishment. Furthermore, given two of the four accusations against former president Donald Trump are based on the obstruction law, the decision may have an impact on his trial, which has been delayed for years due to allegations that he attempted to retain power after his loss in 2020. He may file a motion to have those charges dropped.
On the other hand, among the 1,400 individuals accused in the Capitol assault, about eighty percent did not face charges of disrupting the proceedings. The majority faced accusations of violating federal property rights and posing a threat or resistance to law enforcement personnel. The defendants who are suspected of deliberately and consciously trying to prevent Congress from officially recognizing the election results and the transfer of presidential authority will face the obstruction allegation, according to the prosecution.
Joseph W. Fischer, a Pennsylvania police officer who is not on duty and who attended the "Stop the Steal" demonstration on January 6, filed a challenge to the obstruction accusation. He is also charged with assaulting a federal officer while in the police line outside the Capitol.
Defense attorneys said that by accusing rioters of a felony that is restricted to actions that cause destruction or tampering with evidence that investigators are seeking, prosecutors went too far. The attorneys said that the government's expansive interpretation of the legislation would enable prosecutors to go after demonstrators or lobbyists who cause disruptions in congressional committee meetings.
Defense attorneys also concluded that; "attacks on police officers and other violent disruptions of the orderly handover of power after a presidential election, according to the Justice Department, do not constitute insignificant meddling. There are no instances of prosecutors employing the two-decade-old obstruction charge against lawful protestors expressing their right to free expression, government attorneys said in opposition to the notion that using the legislation in this manner would violate the First Amendment."
In Fischer v. U.S., the court considered how to read a provision that Congress changed in 2002 as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was passed in the wake of the Enron affair. In particular, the court considered what the term "otherwise" meant in this context.
"Corruptly — (1) 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; or (2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so" is defined by law as punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
All but one of the fifteen judges who have ruled on the issue in a case relating to January 6 at the federal courtroom in Washington, D.C., have agreed with the prosecution that the law's second clause should be interpreted as a "catchall." Despite neither destroying or hiding papers, those judges claimed that the rioters who wanted Congress to refuse to acknowledge Biden's win were "otherwise" blocking that process.
A Trump appointee, U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols, stood out as he supported Fischer, stating that the term "otherwise" only applied to further attempts to falsify or delete data.
The Supreme Court was considering the appellate court's ruling, which was overturned by a split U.S. Court of appellate for the D.C. Circuit.
Nichols's ruling, according to Judge Florence Pan, a candidate for Joe Biden, was too restrictive and in conflict with the statute's language. Joining her in part was Trump nominee Judge Justin Walker, who wrote, "We cannot assume, and think it unlikely, that Congress used expansive language to address such narrow concerns."
The Trump-appointed judge Gregory Katsas dissented, arguing that law-abiding actions like protesting and lobbying would be endangered by an expansive interpretation of the obstruction statute, similar to the one used by prosecutors against the Jan. 6 rioters.
