In a sharp dissent, Justice Amy Coney Barrett criticized her fellow justices for their decision to reduce an obstruction charge used to prosecute several rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The Supreme Court voted 6-3 on Friday to side with Joseph Fischer, a former police officer accused of participating in the attack on the Capitol who challenged the provision as improperly applied to protesters.
Barrett, an appointee of former President Trump who faces a criminal charge that could be affected by the court’s opinion, noted that the high court does not dispute that the certification of the 2020 presidential election results that day qualifies as an “official process.” . nor that the protesters – including Fischer himself, allegedly – delayed the process.
“Given these premises, the argument that Fischer can be tried for ‘obstructing, influencing or impeding an official proceeding’ seems open and shut. So why does the Court decide otherwise?” wrote the conservative justice in a dissent joined by liberals Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. “Because you simply can’t believe Congress meant what it said.”
The law, Section 1512(c)(2), makes it a crime to obstruct, impede, or “corruptly” interfere with official congressional inquiries and investigations. The maximum penalty is 20 years in prison and has been used to prosecute more than 350 protesters accused of disrupting the certification of the 2020 Congressional vote.
But Fischer said the Justice Department reworked the indictment to comprehensively prosecute those who participated in the riot, when the law — established in the wake of the Enron accounting scandal — was actually intended to criminalize the destruction of documents.
Barrett acknowledged that the Congress that enacted the law likely did not have the riot in mind when creating it. She joked: “Who could blame Congress for this lack of imagination?”
However, she argued that statutes “often go beyond the problem that inspired them,” accusing the majority of “abandoning” the rules of legal interpretation and completing “textual backflips” to find “some way—any way—” to restrict the scope of the provision. to reach.
“Joseph Fischer allegedly participated in a riot at the Capitol that forced the postponement of the joint session of Congress on January 6,” Barrett wrote. “Hindering the advancement of an official process certainly qualifies as obstructing or impeding the process by means other than the destruction of documents. Fischer’s alleged conduct therefore falls within the scope of (c)(2).”
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority that it would be “peculiar” to discover that, in Congress’s efforts to plug the Enron loophole, it “hid…a blanket provision” that went beyond the destruction of documents that prompted the legislation .
“The best 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 than those specified by Congress in (c)(1),” Roberts wrote.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a liberal, joined the conservative majority. In a separate opinion, she signaled her belief that it is possible that Fischer and other defendants could still be prosecuted on the charge.
“This issue remains available for lower courts to determine pretrial detention,” Jackson wrote.
The Supreme Court’s decision could have profound implications for the Justice Department’s years-long prosecution of the Capitol attack.
Among those charged under the provision were several members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers extremist groups, including leaders Enrique Tarrio and Stewart Rhodes.
Two of Trump’s charges in his federal election subversion case — which is on indefinite pause while the Supreme Court considers his challenge to presidential immunity — also stem from the provision. He pleaded not guilty.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
