Thoughts on this one?

[rambot]

A whole bunch of charges and conviction would go up in the air because of the way one particular judge felt it appropriate to restrict the definition of what a "obstruction of an official proceeding" can mean.

Supreme Court will hear a case that could undo Capitol riot charge against hundreds, including Trump

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols found that prosecutors stretched the law beyond its scope to inappropriately apply it in these cases. Nichols ruled that a defendant must have taken “some action with respect to a document, record or other object” to obstruct an official proceeding under the law.

I don't know how to look it up, but if I were a betting man (though I'm not) this feels like something a Trump appointed judge would write. Not a competent, impartial and reasonable jugde.

 

[Arcangl86]

A whole bunch of charges and conviction would go up in the air because of the way one particular judge felt it appropriate to restrict the definition of what a "obstruction of an official proceeding" can mean.

Supreme Court will hear a case that could undo Capitol riot charge against hundreds, including Trump


I don't know how to look it up, but if I were a betting man (though I'm not) this feels like something a Trump appointed judge would write. Not a competent, impartial and reasonable jugde.

So US federal judges tend to be in Wikipedia, as this one was. And you are indeed right that he is a Trump appointee. I've read the case and his argument is strained at best. He focuses on one word in the statute, uses a Supreme Court case that was overruled as his basis for analysis and then dismissed the fact that several good appellate court cases disagreed with him.

ETA:
Also I see no reason SCOTUS should have decided to take this case. It's not a circuit split, it doesn't involve state interpretation of federal law and I fail to see how it qualifies as "an important question of federal law."

 

[hislegacy]

Trump appointed 226 judges in his four years - it is not hard to find one.

Being said - the case will rise and fall on it's merits. The final say is with the highest court in the land. I support their decision regardless of what it is.

Does anyone else?

 

[rambot]

Trump appointed 226 judges in his four years - it is not hard to find one.

Fair point. But there are over 48,000 judges.

Being said - the case will rise and fall on it's merits. The final say is with the highest court in the land. I support their decision regardless of what it is.

Does anyone else?

Sure Conservatives played the "there are no" with the rules to pack the courts, and there are some significant questions about impartiality with a certain justice whose name rhymes with "Jerance Pom muss", but until such time as those are sorted, I guess there's no choice.

Regardless, does it make sense to you that you could theoretically have a BLM protest right in the middle of the floor of congress, right in the middle of a vote and, so long as they don't have a "document, record, or any object" there is ABSOLUTELY no charges that could be laid?

Seems patently absurd and a clearly desperate overreach.

 

[hislegacy]

Sure Conservatives played the "there are no" with the rules to pack the courts

The President filled open positions - he did not pack the courts.

 

[rambot]

So US federal judges tend to be in Wikipedia, as this one was. And you are indeed right that he is a Trump appointee. I've read the case and his argument is strained at best. He focuses on one word in the statute, uses a Supreme Court case that was overruled as his basis for analysis and then dismissed the fact that several good appellate court cases disagreed with him.

ETA:
Also I see no reason SCOTUS should have decided to take this case. It's not a circuit split, it doesn't involve state interpretation of federal law and I fail to see how it qualifies as "an important question of federal law."

Does that add to your suspicion or concern? Or does the background on this case just seem insurmountably dismissable?

 

[ThatRobGuy]

It's a challenging one...

While it's pretty clear that many of the people who went in the building on that day had intentions to obstruct official business, there has to be "a line" (referring to a specific action or action(s)) drawn somewhere that would differentiate the difference between "protest/trespass" and "intent to obstruct".

In this case, the judge is ruling that the line is "some action with respect to a document, record or other object".

While it does seem like it's a conservative judge showing some favoritism (and it likely is), it does raise the interesting question about what those specific actions should be that would differentiate criminal trespass from full blown obstruction.


It seems like there's two different risk scenarios at play here...

One that lets guilty people off the hook due to an overly rigid definition (thereby setting up what could be a bad precedent), and the other that ends with risking partisan actors having the ability to overcharge people based on someone's overly broad interpretation (also a bad precedent)


For instance, if merely "being in the building when you shouldn't be" can be inferred as "intent to obstruct" whatever official business was happening in the building at the time, then under those standards, some of the other recent protests (like the one that happened recently involving Palestinian support protestors... or the one where protestors barged into the TN statehouse) could be swept up in obstruction charges by vindictive GOP-leaning people looking to "send a message"


To me personally (knowing the original spirit of what the law is in the US "tis better to let 10 guilty men go free than to lock up 1 innocent man"), I'd rather let the Jan 6th people off with criminal trespass & disorderly conduct charges than see a legal precedent getting set where whoever's in power can start slapping protestors with felony obstruction charges.