WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court on Friday left felony charges against a Jan. 6 rioter in limbo, forcing the Justice Department to meet a higher standard to pursue obstruction prosecutions, including the case against Donald Trump.
The justices ruled in a 6-3 decision that the Justice Department had improperly used a statute intended to govern document destruction to charge over 355 defendants for interfering with the certification of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021.
The decision creates another avenue for rioters to challenge their convictions and prison terms, but is unlikely to result in a wave of lowered sentences for rioters, especially those who engaged in violence at the Capitol.
In Trump’s case, two of his four charges are related to the relevant statute: conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and outright obstruction.
Special counsel Jack Smith may be required to amend his initial indictment, but the charges may meet the new standard imposed by the justices, as the relevant conduct includes Trump’s scheme to create a false slate of electors, and therefore alter with the ballots themselves.
The question before the court centered on the scope of an “otherwise” clause between two subsections in Title 18 U.S. Code Section 1512, which extends the statute’s covered conduct from document destruction to anything that “otherwise obstructs, influences or impedes any official proceeding.”
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority’s opinion that going forward, the Justice Department must prove that a defendant specifically engaged in document destruction to interfere with an official proceeding to charge them with 1512 (c)(2).
Roberts explained how the Justice Department overstepped by using an example of a zoo sign to compare.
He described a situation where a sign outside a gorilla enclosure prohibits petting, feeding, yelling or throwing objects at the animals, or “otherwise disturb them.”
The George W. Bush appointee then asked whether a nearby visitor eating lunch or talking with a friend has obeyed the rule, concluding that the answer is “surely yes,” as the rule clearly means “direct interaction with and harassment of the zoo animals.”
“It would be implausible to assume those activities were prohibited, even if literally covered by the language,” Roberts wrote.
Roberts explained that if Congress wanted the charge to apply to more than just evidence impairment, they would have said so when lawmakers created the statute in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 following the Enron scandal.
“It would be peculiar to conclude that in closing the Enron gap, Congress actually hid away in the second part of the third subsection of Section 1512 a catchall provision that reaches far beyond the document shredding and similar scenarios that prompted the legislation in the first place,” Roberts wrote.
Following the decision, Matthew Graves, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, released a fact sheet breaking down the likely impact it would have on the Jan. 6 prosecutions.
Since Jan. 6, 1,427 individuals have been charged in connection with the riot, but 82% of those cases, or 1,178 people, were not charged with 1512(c)(2). For the remaining 249 cases, every defendant faces another charge, either another felony or misdemeanor.
Additionally, only 27 individuals are currently serving a sentence where the obstruction charge was their only felony, less than 2% of all Capitol riot cases.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett dissented, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joining. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the remaining liberal-appointed justice sided with the majority.
Barrett, a Donald Trump appointee, wrote that considering Fisher’s conduct was part of a successful effort to halt Congress’ certification of the 2020 election, the case seems “open and shut,” yet the majority seemed unable to believe Congress meant what it said.
She noted that Section 1512 (c)(2) is broad, and while Congress clearly did not target an event like the Capitol riot — adding that they couldn’t be blamed for that “failure of imagination — statutes regularly go beyond the issue that inspired them. Further, under when interpreting statutes the court must stick to the text.
“The court, abandoning that approach, does textual backflips to find some way — any way — to narrow the reach of subsection (c)(2),” Barrett wrote.
Joseph Fischer was one of the 350 people charged with felony obstruction in the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which forced Congress to halt its certification of the 2020 election results. The Justice Department only pursued this crime for a fraction of the over 1,350 Jan. 6 defendants who intended to disrupt the joint session of Congress.
Those prosecutions drew scrutiny for the use of a two-decade-old obstruction law enacted in the wake of the Enron accounting fraud scandal. Fischer claimed the government erroneously used the 2002 law to target Jan. 6 rioters.
Aimed at closing gaps in prior obstruction statutes, Congress enacted several laws criminalizing interference with official proceedings. The two-pronged statute prohibits the destruction of evidence to impede an official proceeding or otherwise corruptly obstructing any official proceeding.
Fischer and other rioters were charged under the second prong. During oral arguments in April, he told the justices that the “otherwise” provision had to be tied to evidence tampering. The Justice Department, Fischer claimed, was trying to turn the catchall provision into a dragnet.
The government argued that the provision included no such limit. U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said Fischer’s reading turned the prongs into a duplication of each other instead of reading them as independent prohibitions.
Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a statement following the court’s decision, in which he clarified that the majority of Jan. 6 defendants would not be affected, and no defendant faces just the obstruction charge.
“I am disappointed by today’s decision, which limits an important federal statute that the Department has sought to use to ensure that those most responsible for that attack face appropriate consequences,” Garland said. “We will continue to use all available tools to hold accountable those criminals responsible for the January 6 attack on our democracy.”
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