The Supreme Court has limited obstruction charges brought against members of the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In a 6-3 ruling along non-ideological lines, the justices ruled in favor of Joseph Fischer, a former police officer accused of storming the Capitol on who challenged his obstruction of an official proceeding charge.
The justices argued that the law, which was enacted in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act after the Enron accounting scandal, was only meant to apply to more limited circumstances involving forms of evidence tampering like document shredding, not to what was seen on Jan. 6, 2021 at the Capitol.
“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,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “The better conclusion is that subsection (c)(2) was designed by Congress to capture other forms of evidence and other means of impairing its integrity or availability beyond those Congress specified in (c)(1).”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson who joined the majority, wrote in a separate opinion that Congress had not meant to create a broad obstruction statute when it enacted the law in 2002.
“There is no indication whatsoever that Congress intended to create a sweeping, all-purpose obstruction statute,” she wrote. “Here, it beggars belief that Congress would have inserted a breathtakingly broad, first-of-its kind criminal obstruction statute (accompanied by a substantial 20-year maximum penalty) in the midst of a significantly more granular series of obstruction prohibitions without clarifying its intent to do so – not in the text of the provision itself, nor in the surrounding statutory context, nor in any statement issued during the enactment process.”
The ruling in a setback for the Justice Department’s effort to prosecute rioters for their involvement in the attack on the Capitol.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that he is “disappointed” by the decision, but that the “vast majority” of rioters charged for their role in the attack “will not be affected by this decision.”
The DOJ will continue to “use all available tools to hold accountable those criminally responsible for the January 6 attack on our democracy,” he added.
There are approximately 249 pending cases relating to the attack that involves the obstruction charge, according to CNN. About 52 people were convicted and sentenced with the obstruction charge as their only felony. Of those, 27 people are currently incarcerated.
