Watch live coverage of it January 6 obstruction case in the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court’s decision to review the propriety of an obstruction law that has been widely used against those involved in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, is already having an impact on some of the rioters.
A small group of people convicted under the law have been released from custody — or will soon be — even though judges hearing arguments Tuesday are not expected to rule on the case for months.
In recent weeks, federal judges in Washington agreed to release about 10 defendants serving prison terms under the obstruction law, saying the defendants could wait at home as the court determined whether the law should have been used at all to detain them. they locked.
Among those already free is Matthew Bledsoe, a moving company owner from Tennessee who scaled a wall outside the Capitol and then marched through the building with a Trump flag, eventually placing it on the arm of a statue of him President Gerald R. Ford.
Soon to be released are defendants such as Kevin Seefried, a drywall installer from Delaware who flew a Confederate flag into the Capitol, and Alexander Sheppard, an Ohio man who broke through police lines to become one of the first people to storm the building .
The staggered sentences — which could be reinstated depending on how the Supreme Court rules — are just one of the complications that arose from the court’s overhaul of the obstruction law, known in the penal code as 18 USC 1512. the charge has thus far been used against more than 350 rioters, including Jacob Chansley, the so-called QAnon Shaman, and members of the far-right extremist groups Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.
When the justices announced in December that they planned to review the law, many legal experts expressed concern that a ruling that narrowed its scope or limited its use in cases related to Jan. 6 could deal a devastating blow to the Department’s efforts. Justice to hold hundreds of rioters accountable.
Federal prosecutors have often used the obstruction count instead of more politically charged charges such as the contentious conspiracy to punish the central event of Jan. 6: the disruption of the process on Capitol Hill to certify the election.
But in recent months, judges and prosecutors working on Capitol Hill riot cases have quietly adjusted to the potential threat of a Supreme Court ruling, and the risk that the cases could have catastrophic consequences overall no longer seems so serious.
First, there are currently no defendants facing only the obstruction charge, according to the Justice Department. Every rioter charged with this charge has also been charged with other crimes, meaning that even if the obstruction law were removed as a tool in the January 6 prosecutions, there would be no cases that would disappear entirely.
Indeed, if the court rules that the obstruction count does not apply to the attack on the Capitol, the main effect of the ruling will be on the sentences the defendants face. The obstruction law carries a hefty maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and while few, if any, rioters have gotten that much, the statute usually results in several years.
However, some judges have already indicated that they would increase sentences on other charges if the number of obstacles was not available to them.
In February, for example, Judge Royce C. Lamberth denied early release to an Iowa man named Leo Kelly who was sentenced to 30 months in prison on a charge of obstruction and six other misdemeanors.
Judge Lamberth’s reason for not releasing Mr. Kelly?
Even if the Supreme Court ruled he could not convict Mr. Kelly of obstruction, Judge Lamberth said he could increase the defendant’s total prison time by imposing consecutive, rather than concurrent, sentences on the misdemeanor charges.
