Supreme Court ruling makes it harder to charge Jan. 6 rioters with obstruction

FILE - Violent insurrectionists loyal to then-President Donald Trump try to break through a police barrier, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol in Washington. on Friday made it harder to charge Capitol riot defendants with obstruction, a charge that also has been brought against former President Donald Trump.that the charge of obstructing an official proceeding, enacted in 2002 in response to the financial scandal that brought down Enron Corp.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the court’s opinion, joined by conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, and by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Most lower court judges who have weighed in have allowed the charge to stand. Among them, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee, wrote that “statutes often reach beyond the principal evil that animated them.”

The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, which has handled Jan. 6 prosecutions, said no one who has been convicted of or charged with obstruction will be completely cleared because of the ruling. Every defendant also has other felony or misdemeanor charges, or both, prosecutors said.

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