Supreme Court says prosecutors wrongly charged hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday made it harder to bring obstruction of justice charges against those accused of participating in the Capitol riot, a charge also brought against former President Donald Trump.

The justices ruled 6-3 that a charge of obstructing an official proceeding brought in 2002 in response to the financial scandal that brought down Enron Corp. must include evidence that the defendants tried to tamper with or destroy documents. Only some of the people who brutally attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021 fall into this category.

The decision could become the basis for accusations by Trump and his Republican allies that the Justice Department unfairly treated those accused of participating in the Capitol riot.

It is unclear how the court’s decision will affect the case against Trump in Washington, although special counsel Jack Smith said the charges against the former president would not change.

The Supreme Court returned the case of former Pennsylvania police officer Joseph Fischer to a lower court to determine whether Fischer could be charged with obstruction of justice. Fischer was accused of a role in disrupting Congress’ certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

Fischer is one of about 350 people charged with obstructing justice. Some have pleaded guilty or been convicted of lesser offenses.

The court’s opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas and liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

A broad interpretation of the obstruction statute “would also criminalize a wide range of mundane conduct, exposing activists and lobbyists to decades in prison,” Roberts wrote.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett dissented, as did Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.

About 170 Capitol insurrection defendants were convicted of obstructing or conspiring to obstruct a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, including the leaders of two far-right extremist groups, the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. The sentences of many defendants were postponed until the judges issued a ruling in the case.

At least 13 people with ties to Maine have been charged for their alleged involvement in the insurrection, but only one person, Kyle Fitzsimons of Lebanon, has been convicted of obstructing justice.

He was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison. He currently resides at FCI Coleman in Florida. His earliest release date is April 2027.

Fitzsimons appealed the conviction last July to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which agreed to wait until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled.

The other Maine residents charged for their alleged involvement in the attack on the Capitol face charges including disorderly conduct, picketing and assaulting law enforcement.

Nationally, some rioters were even granted early release from prison while appeals were pending amid concerns that they could spend longer in prison than they should in the event of a Supreme Court ruling against the Department of Justice. They include Kevin Seefried, a Delawarean who threatened a black police officer with a flagpole attached to a Confederate battle flag during the storming of the Capitol. Seefried was sentenced to three years in prison last year, but a judge recently ordered him released to one year in prison pending the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Most of the lower-court judges who weighed in allowed the objection to stand. Among them, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee, wrote that “statutes often transcend the central evil that animates them.”

But U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, another Trump appointee, dismissed the charges against Fischer and two other defendants, writing that prosecutors had gone too far. A divided panel of a federal appeals court in Washington reinstated the charges before the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case.

More than 1,400 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot. About 1,000 of them have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury or judge after a trial.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, which handled the Jan. 6 trials, said no one convicted or charged with obstructing justice will be completely exonerated by the ruling. Each defendant also faces other felony or misdemeanor charges or both, prosecutors said.

For about 50 people who were convicted, the only felony charge was obstruction of justice, prosecutors said. Of those, about two dozen who are still serving their sentences are most at risk of being sentenced.

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