Due to a decision from the US Supreme Court on June 28, 2024, hundreds of people charged with participating in the mob at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, will have to be re-indicted and perhaps dropped. Former US President Donald Trump is one of the defendants who allegedly violated the obstruction law in a broad sense, according to the higher court.
The Supreme Court ruled in Fischer v. United States that three plaintiffs who were accused of participating in the mob at the US Capitol could not be subject to a federal law prohibiting obstructing an official proceeding. Trump is hardly a plaintiff in the case; however, Jack Smith has charged him with violating the same act differently.
I’ll reveal what the judge’s decision means for the plaintiffs on January 6 and for Smith’s case against Trump as a law professor who teaches and writes in the areas of legal rules and federal authorities.
Costs against Capitol rioters
According to their prosecutions, Joseph Fischer, Edward Lang and Garret Miller were present at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. During the mob, police allege that all three people allegedly assaulted police officers inside the Capitol building. One of the people, Lang, brandished a pitcher and a stolen police weapon, and another, Miller, afterwards, on social media, called for the death of US Representative Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez.
The three gentlemen were accused of a number of acts, including assault on a federal officer, disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, and obstructing a legislative hearing by federal prosecutors. The Supreme Court charm is addressing that next command.
The accused argued before the trial that the barrier charge against them was solely based on the tampering with the proof, not the violent disturbance of a congressional hearing. The DC Circuit US Court of Appeals overturned the district court’s decision and ordered the situation to go back to test.
The Supreme Court finally consented to hear the case, putting the test on hold while it considered the barrier law’s range.
Defining a get- all expression
The Supreme Court agreed with the plaintiffs and held that the legislation just forbids data tampering in a 6 to 3 judgment from Chief Justice John Roberts. The defendants then appealed the case to the appeals court to determine whether the plaintiffs had broken the law in accordance with that narrower reading by attempting to stop Congress from confirming the state ‘ true electoral votes.
The jury began with the blockage law’s text. The law penalizes people who “alters, damages, mutilates, or conceals a history, file, or other thing” or who “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any formal proceeding”. The defendants ‘ lawsuits in Congress to formally announce the election results would have otherwise obstruct (ed ) by the government.
But the judge rejected that argument, holding that the word “otherwise obstructs” refers only to restriction that – like changing, destroying, mutilating or concealing a report, document or image – impairs the availability or integrity of evidence for use in an official proceeding. The government’s catch- both for “otherwise obstructing” an established proceeding may be read in popular with the list of actions that precedes it, the court explained. Otherwise, the list would be redundant.
The court also pointed to the law’s historical background. Congress, the court explained, enacted this specific obstruction law in 2002 in the wake of the Enron accounting fraud scandal. Its goal was to fill a void in the country’s existing obstruction laws, which at the time prohibited ordering a third party to destroy incriminating evidence but did not do so by destroying the evidence oneself.
The government’s reading of the law, the court explained, would stretch it far beyond that purpose, prohibiting forms of obstruction that had nothing to do with evidence and that Congress never intended to criminalize.
What this means for Jan. 6 defendants– and for Trump
The Fischer defendants ‘ case is still ongoing despite the Supreme Court’s decision, who are likely to go on trial for assault and disorderly conduct charges.
But it may lead to the dismissal of obstruction charges, or reversal of obstruction convictions, for other January 6 defendants. According to an NPR database, federal prosecutors have charged at least 250 other defendants with obstruction of an official proceeding, and 128 have been convicted.
The decision may also undermine former president Donald Trump’s case against him, who Smith has charged with obstructing the same statute. The former president is likely to ask for dismissal of that charge if that case survives a separate pending Supreme Court appeal.
Trump may not be successful, though, as the obstruction charge against him is largely motivated by the claim that he organized slates of electors to report false election results to Congress. That could result in compromising the validity of the evidence presented in the certification hearing.
The former president is also facing charges of obstruction on numerous other counts. However, the decision may narrow the case and make it more difficult for the special counsel to give evidence to the jury regarding the January 6 incident. Under this new ruling, that violence alone may not count as obstruction.
The Fischer case also demonstrates how occasionally, especially in high-stakes cases, justices can use legal reasoning strategies that they are quick to criticize in other contexts. Members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority cited the obstruction law’s legislative history in the opinion, which conservative jurists like the late Justice Antonin Scalia frequently called unreliable.
The Supreme Court’s decision in the Fischer case may have a significant impact on the special counsel’s long-awaited prosecution of former president Trump.
But even if it does not, it still sheds important light on the court’s inner workings and the federal government’s power to safeguard the integrity of its proceedings.
The University of Richmond’s assistant professor of law is Riley T. Keenan.
This article was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.