A federal appeals court decided last Friday that the January 6 defendants had their sentences improperly lengthened by the court.
With this, district court judges in Washington DC will be recalculating the verdict on more than 100 people illegally convicted of felony for their alleged role in the 2021 J6 protest.
The Justice Department argues that enhancement to the verdict of the J6 demonstrators should be applied, as the counting of electoral votes they alleged could considered a court proceeding.
Federal sentencing guidelines encourage judges to apply the “administration of justice” enhancement to defendants who disrupt judicial proceedings like grand jury investigations or court hearings. The enhancement can increase recommended sentences by more than a year.
One highlight example was the case of Larry Brock, a J6 defendant who appealed his case to the 3-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit. The appeals court rejected the enhancements decision as calculated by US District Judge John Bates.
The Justice Department will determine whether it would send an appeal to the full 11-member bench of the appeals court or the Supreme Court.
Brock was accused of being part of the earliest demonstrators to breach Capitol security. The appeals court panel found him guilty but ruled that Judge Bates should lower his sentence without the enhancement.
“Brock’s interference with one stage of the electoral college vote-counting process — while no doubt endangering our democratic processes and temporarily derailing Congress’s constitutional work — did not interfere with the ‘administration of justice,’” wrote Judge Patricia Millett in a unanimous ruling joined by Judges Cornelia Pillard and Judith Rogers.
“Brock challenges both the district court’s interpretation of Section 1512(c)(2)’s elements and the sufficiency of the evidence to support that conviction.”
“Because Section 2J1.2’s text, commentary, and context establish that the ‘administration of justice’ does not extend to Congress’s counting and certification of electoral college votes, the district court erred in applying Section 2J1.2(b)(2)’s three-level sentencing enhancement to Brock’s Section 1512(c)(2) conviction.”
The panel found that the counting of electoral votes was not part of any court proceeding but rather a part of a lengthy process to affirm the results of presidential elections.
“Taken as a whole, the multi-step process of certifying electoral college votes — as important to our democratic system of government as it is — bears little resemblance to the traditional understanding of the administration of justice as the judicial or quasi-judicial investigation or determination of individual rights,” the panel wrote.
They added that the police authorities who were at the capitol on January 6 were there to guard the lawmakers and their process, “not to investigate individuals’ rights or to enforce Congress’s certification decision.”
“After all,” the judges wrote, “law enforcement is present for security purposes for a broad variety of governmental proceedings that do not involve the ‘administration of justice’—presidential inaugurations, for example, and the pardoning of the Thanksgiving Turkey.”
Read the decision here:
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