Supreme Court rules in favor of January 6 riot participant on obstruction case

Today, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a former police officer who joined the Capitol rioters in a case involving obstruction charges.

The 6-3 vote secured victory for “Joseph Fischer, who is among hundreds of defendants in the Jan. 6 indictment — including former President Donald Trump — charged with obstructing an official proceeding in connection with their efforts to block Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s election victory.” NBC News reports.

Essentially, the Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors overstepped the bounds of obstruction law by charging him as a member of the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Section 1512(c)(2) was enacted in 2002 after the Enron scandal as part of Sarbanes-Oxley Act. According to this text, “it is a crime to ‘corruptly’ obstruct, impede, or interfere with official congressional inquiries and investigations, punishable by up to 20 years in prison.”

This right was used in the criminal proceedings of January 6 insurgentsBut Fischer, like other rioters, argued that the U.S. Justice Department had overstepped its authority by amending “a charge that once criminalized the destruction of documents to also cover the conduct of those who stormed the Capitol that day.”

Fischer was previously employed in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania as a policemanand a four-minute video from that day “in which he can be heard shouting ‘attack’ and is seen struggling with police officers.” Prosecutors also allege Fischer sent threatening text messages, including one which read, “Take the Democrat congress to the gallows… you can’t vote if they can’t breathe lol.” Moreover, when the FBI tried to arrest him, he “shouted obscenities at agents and his own police chief and tried to hide the phone he was using to record the events at the Capitol.”

Supreme Court Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for majority “interpret the law narrowly, stating that it applies only where the defendant’s actions have compromised the integrity of the evidence.”

“It would be odd to conclude that, by closing the Enron loophole, Congress actually buried in the second part of the third subsection of Section 1512 a general provision that goes far beyond the document destruction and similar scenarios that prompted the legislation in the first place,” he wrote. Roberts.

“The better conclusion is that subsection (c)(2) was designed by Congress to cover other forms of evidence and other means of challenging its integrity or availability beyond those that Congress specified in (c)(1).” Roberts uninterrupted.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the conservative majority and Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in a dissenting opinion. In her dissenting opinion, Barrett wrote: “The case that Fischer could be prosecuted for ‘obstructing, influencing or obstructing an official proceeding’ appears clear and closed.” So why does the Court rule in a different way?… Because it simply cannot imagine that Congress meant what it said.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a press release expressing disappointment with the ruling, but said the “vast majority” of insurrectionists accused of participating in the events of January 6 “will not be affected by this decision.”