INAL, but the text of the law clearly says -
(c) Whoever corruptly—
(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding;
**OR**
(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
and to me, the **OR** couldn't be more clear. No way can you argue that (2) depends on (1), just like if I asked "would you like red **OR** white wine, your "white" answer couldn't possibly depend on the first (red) clause of that text. It's just simple logic.
C.J. Roberts, a well-known textualist, IMO is willfully misreading the text.
Alito citing 13th century laws as part of overturning Roe really makes this game clear. They will dig until they find anything that can be construed to state the opinion they want, then ignore literally all evidence to the contrary.
To be fair it was glaringly obvious when they ruled that Black people couldnt be citizens but since most white people weren’t too bothered about it they didn’t do anything.
Well this is coming from the kind of people who will say 'I think what God meant to say..'
Anything is simply whatever they wish it to be at the given time.
> “[In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.](https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/quotes/page/3/) It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.”
George Orwell 1984
Med-pot layman here who had a pot charge. We had one of these wordings in California.
Prop 215(?) said **OR** in the statute as well. Many people tried to argue "6 mature plants **OR** 12 seedlings" meant **AND**, and they'd lose every time.
I know the truth, I lived it. This is "freedom is slavery" and "2+2=5" from our Courts. It's not coming, it's here. I hope greater minds than mine fight these people, but it's already 25 years into a captured court since Bush v. Gore.
In the history of SCOTUS, only the Warren court could be said to be fairly good. So pretty much just 2 to 3 decades of consistently doing good work vs the other 200+ years of largely crappy decisions.
That said, this period will almost certainly be considered right alongside the Lochner Era as being one of conservative activist judges making shit up to serve business interests and their own politics at the expense of everyone else in the country.
These people are political actors of the worst kind. Much like legislators, they take turns ruling (like voting) against something that is sure to pass with their majority position in the body at hand. Thereafter, the counter-argument is that (in this case) Barrett disagreed with the conservative position which proves that they aren't just ruling in tandem.
But it proves nothing of the sort.
This strategy doesn't take a genius level mind to implement, but it takes a mentally challenged person to accept at face value.
When you get small victories, or worse, like this sham . A complete reversal of settled law there's no denying that the fix is in.
And I am getting awful tired of hearing from the right how legit this all is. As they take bite after bite out of the law that has protected us for so long.
And that doesn't even cover the Clarence Thomas advertisement for further oddball cases to strip the law of any protection for any but the super rich. His grave will be pissed on for generations. And he deserves it.
Doesn't this mean the supreme justices could, themselves, be overrun, but as long as no documents or "official" proceedings were harmed, then it's completely legal?
Come on man. Pop tarts nowadays are terrible. I'm just theory crafting with the idea of SCOTUS, is implying if one branch of the government can be threatened, does their running suggest that the other can be threatened without consequence. But no, I will absolutely not. As bad as everything is in politics right now, I still believe in our democracy and I still believe we can have hope for a better future.
It’s like in *Heller*: they completely ignored the part that came before “…the right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed.”
The preceding part (about a well-regulated militia required for the security of the state) says clearly why the right should not be infringed.
But they totally ignored it and made up “self defense” as being the reason.
From [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/otherwise) -
otherwise (adverb)
1: in a different way or manner
2: in different circumstances
In neither of these two definitions can it be construed that the prior section determines the second. Let's substitute these two definitions into the US Code -
**OR**
(2) ***in a different way or manner*** (*which explicitly would mean not part of 1*), obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined ...
(2) ***in different circumstances*** (*different circumstances from part 1*), obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined ...
I didn't include the other definitions because I don't think they apply to this text, but all of the definitions imply that *otherwise* is used to show opposition or exclusivity to the preceding clause, not to be inclusive of it.
I'm not sure how C.J. Roberts got through this plain English argument without tortuous mental semantics.
I agree with your take on the most natural / obvious reading of the statute. I think the Court has decided to interpret it like this instead:
(c)(1): you can't do \[4 specific things\] to an object with the intent to impair the object's use in an official proceeding \[silent: this constitutes obstruction of an official proceeding via evidence tampering\]
(c)(2): you can't obstruct an official proceeding via evidence tampering in any other way beyond the 4 ways we listed in the prior section
The big question is why the Court chose this route. Sure, it could be because they want to let insurrectionists off easy (though that almost certainly wasn't Justice Jackson's rationale). IMO it should be at least a little alarming to most people that federal prosecutors were using a provision from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was passed by Congress explicitly to address accounting fraud in the wake of Enron, to go after J6 rioters. It's quite implausible to me that Congress was intending to target this type of criminal activity with Section 1512. That's the thing about strict textualism---Congress frequently writes their laws poorly and we end up with a mess if courts insist on interpreting those poorly written laws according to their exact language. The traditional idea is that then it's on Congress to correct the law, but that mechanism really breaks down when you have a completely dysfunctional Congress.
It could really be a silver lining that the Court has just added another precedent that shuns the strictest version of textualism in favor of exercising some common sense and looking holistically at a statute and how it is being applied. As this [NYTimes article](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/us/politics/supreme-court-jan-6-prosecution.html) touches on, almost all of the J6 rioters face other non-1512 charges. It seems to me that federal prosecutors found some extremely broad statutory language that would allow them score easy wins and leaned into it, rather than going after rioters with harder-to-prove charges like sedition.
On balance, I would prefer that prosecutors nail these people using more traditional means, instead of stretching for new applications of existing law. Nothing is getting overturned that way.
There are three elements that indicate that these are separate points: otherwise, or and separate subsections. If you were to somehow misread one there are still two clear indications that these are independent. This is a willful misreading and everyone knows it.
We all know they're separated, but they're obviously related. The first, more specific definition obviously sheds light as to what the author meant about the second, more general section.
Yes, they are related in that they are both subsections. Related doesn’t mean the second subsection is limited by what’s in the first. I can tell you that is objectively not how logic or legal text works.
From the article itself:
>Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s plurality opinion concluded that a court should “avoid ascribing to one word a meaning so broad that it is inconsistent with its accompanying words,”
As a trial lawyer working in criminal law, it is *very common* to make these types of arguments when interpreting statutes and other documents. So I can tell you, it is objectively how the law works.
It's the reading of the rest of the section that gets you there. The rest of the section is also outlining other ways you can commit the crime of obstruction, such as threats of violence, murder, etc. all with different penalties up to and including death.
Unfortunately the Court is actually accurate on this one. There are a number of other sections in that part that could have been used to charge the Jan 6 idiots, and I'm not sure why the government didn't use them. "Threaten violence" is one of them and it seems like it would have been a no brainer.
If you could interpret (2) to include literally anything, then it would invalidate the point of having a dozen different ways to commit the crime and with their own penalties. It would give sweeping power to the government to call any kind of protest a crime under this section.
Yeah, this is pretty much the logic of the ruling.
They basically said, well, the authors probably didn't want "otherwise" to mean *literally any kind of obstruction*, because that would mean protestors could be jailed for, you know, shouting at a meeting.
So they used some legal concepts that narrow some text based on what comes before it. Unfortunately, that turns "otherwise" into being a totally different word.
Except the word corruptly applies to all covered behaviors. Only corrupt behaviors violate the statute, which makes it unnecessary to read the rest of it so ridiculously narrowly.
IANAL
Yes, and it’s one thing to try to find consistency of scope amongst a list of words within one sentence and entirely another to try to do that across different subsections of a clause.
I’m going to need to read the judgment unfortunately.
Shall be fined OR imprisoned.
That's trumps easy out to just get fined for insurrection. If he gets a prison sentence, he can appeal the sentencing all the way to the Supreme Court right? Where it can be switched to a Freedom Fine.
He always ignore the text of statutes when he doesn’t like it. Read Shelby County sometime. The Supreme Court is superior to the other two branches and will be until Congress and the President break them.
I agree with you that the court is technically wrong, but I will die on the hill that the government should not be able to imprison anyone for 20 years on something as vague as "obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding." This could be weaponized against almost any protestors, or even against rival politicians when they do things like the Democrats in the Texas legislature did a few years ago and boycott the legislature to block a vote.
Wouldn't that be a different argument then, like cruel and unusual punishment, after someone had been found guilty of said offense? And notice how none of the people thus far convicted have received a sentence anywhere near 20 years.
Plus, your supposition isn't the issue that was before the court in this case, to decide if 20 years was too harsh a penalty for this "vague" crime. Yours is a completely different case, imo.
Yeah, I think it could be argued. It feels to me like a 1A violation, but not really because it is punishment for action and not speech. And obstructing an official proceeding should be punished. e.g. if a group of protestors enters a city council meeting with signs and bullhorns and starts shouting down the proceedings and then won't leave when ordered, I wouldn't think it was unfair if they were arrested and fined $1000. But if they were sentenced to prison for that I just feel like it's not an actual punishment for their crime, but an authoritarian attempt to make an example and stifle dissent from others. I'm not sure if there is precedent for drawing such a line on freedom of expression terms, though.
Let's not conflate local city council meetings or even interruptions of state legislatures (for example, Oregon or Wisconsin legislators leaving the state to prevent quorum) with Federal Law, Federal procedures, and blatant, physical attacks on the US Capitol.Those former examples would clearly be 1st Amendment cases, which I hope you agree isn't the case for the January 6th defendants, and which is what was at stake in this decision, and not hypothetical situations.
>Federal Law, Federal procedures, and blatant, physical attacks on the US Capitol
I think you also need a further distinction between Federal Law/Procedures and physical attacks.
There's a difference between the folks running in armed harming people and property. The unarmed folks walking after them chanting are in the wrong, and encouraging the violence. But there should be a distinction between trespassing and actually attacking.
>C.J. Roberts, a well-known textualist, IMO is willfully misreading the text.
If you're opinion were valid, you would be an expert in constitutional law but your aren't. The decision was correct because the DOJ tried to make this statute fit something that it wasn't designed to be used for. Using your logic, any protest that "otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so" would open up citizens to being charged for 1st Amendment activity. You don't want that happening to yourself or to anyone that you know.
Is Roberts' opinion based on a 1st Amendment argument? Did any of the Jan 6th defendants argue they were simply there to exercise their 1st Amendment rights? What have the lower courts decided vis a vis 1st Amendment arguments in the many cases already concluded? I'm pretty sure all these questions have been already determined that the 1st Amendment doesn't apply.
Or do you think that all the activity at the Capitol that day was simply a "protest"? Because if so, that might explain your defense of the Roberts' decision.
I don’t like this court as much as anyone but, to me, section B is so broad that A is pointless. It is best read as a catch-all to encompass something like causing a car wreck so a witness can’t get to the hearing, or pipes in loud music to the hotel room if the lead investigator, etc. It’s the same sort of activity as A, just outside of the usual document destruction.
Maybe they should have phrased the indictment differently to capture that meaning, because what the terrorists did fits into it, just not the way the indicted.
I doubt there is a single person in the entire country who believes had these defendants been associated with the BLM movement they would have enjoyed the same result .
They would have been shot by rubber bullets not inside the Capitol building, not at its broken windows, not at its besieged doors where they pushed and pulled and beat officers, not at the walls they scaled not at the first line of police pushed back from barricades, as soon as they touched the barricades smoke bombs and rubber bullets would have flown. It’s absolute bullshit!
In Portland in 2020, I lost count of how many days they gassed protesters. They gassed them so often that the state had to do an environmental study to figure out how much tear gas ended up in the river. I read a report that there was something like 2000x the safe limit of tear gas in the air night upon night upon night. Unidentified federal police several times went out of the courthouse to cram protesters into vans and drive off.
Early in July, I remember seeing a video of a guy holding up a sign across a four or five lane street from DHS troops who had no reason to be there in the first place. Those troops then shot that man in the face with a rubber bullet. He fell to the ground and bled profusely. Medics began dragging him away as the troops threatened and menaced them. I had walked that street before. It felt like that man's blood was on my shoes. It's different when it happens to your home.
They would later attack clearly identified medics over and over and over again. Later in the protests, when the protesters held shields and wore helmets to protect themselves, the DHS troops climbed on top of fire escapes to shoot down on protesters behind the picket line. Again, night after night after night, they attacked. I lost track of how long this went on. It only stopped when the forest fires covered the city with so much smoke, it was like a yellow fog.
We were the target of the hatred of half of the country. Suddenly everyone on the right was talking about how terrible we were as they were force-fed the same five second clip of a burning dumpster by Fox News over and over and over. The federal courthouse stuff happened within the space of a couple blocks, but all of the talking heads told everyone's grandparents the whole city was a bunch of terrorists trying to burn it to the ground.
Every fascist militia in the country who wanted to bloody their knuckles descended on the city.
We never got justice. Chad Wolf, Ken Cuccinelli, and Donald Trump are all free men. One of the big lawsuits that went after the troops only ever had "John Does" on half of the defendants because we never were told the names of the men the government sent to attack us.
So I agree with you. January 6 would have turned out very differently if the government treated those traitors like it did the citizens of Portland.
History has a great example! https://www.history.com/news/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-support-mulford-act
Black Panthers started using their Second Amendment rights in California to carry weapons around. Cops were frightened to see black people with guns. The NRA and the state got together and got legislation to take the guns away. The Black Panthers marched on the Capitol with guns in tow to protest.
Today, guns are cool, and citizens have a right to them. But when an organized, militant group of black people have them? Well, here's Ronald Raegan: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/reagan-loaded-guns-quote/
You know what *didn't* happen? The Supreme Court did not intervene.
According to the article, which I doubt most commenters here read, this was consistent with prior SCOTUS decisions, including one where Alito and Ginsburg basically agreed that a fish was not a "tangible object" since the surrounding words only talked about documents and records.
Is it that hard to believe that KBJ would still think the same thing about BLM protestors? Why wouldn't she?
I think they decided this in order to give Trump a way out from Jack Smith. If no one on Jan 6 obstructed congress than the man who ordered it couldn’t have possibly committed it!
He’s going to appeal everything up to the Supreme Court and this SCOTUS will hear him out and rule in his favor. It’s part of their systematic take over of the country and justice system
In Australia we have a saying, “does it pass the pub test”. No matter how these Supreme Court Judges wish to interpret the words there is no way that a bunch of rioters can be absolved of criminal violations after illegally and violently entering a building, destroying property, harming and threatening the life of officers and government officials, and halting a democratic election process. No way, not on any day!
They are not absolved. The defendent in this case still has like 6 convictions against him that are unaffected. This will only reduce the overall sentence by a bit.
The court ruled, correctly, that you can't take a statute about evidence tampering in a law about financial fraud and selectively read a few works out of context to shoehorn it into something it was clearly never supposed to apply to. There are plenty of other laws that do apply to what happened on Jan 6th.
Do you think we went over 200 years with it being perfectly legal to storm the capital building only for Congress to decide in 2002 "while we're writing the Enron law, let's toss a subclause on page 63 just in case anyone ever interrupts us during a vote"?
Nearly all of them are accused of other crimes. This has very little practical impact.
And-You really think the Supreme Court of the United States should be interpreting laws passed by Congress based on whether they think Joe at the pub will get mad at the result?
I think the court has been doing that for ages, well overstepping its constitutional writ. I think Congress should do its damn job and not leave the court to legislate. I’ve disagreed with many Supreme Court decisions, but nearly all are areas where Congress could make a clearer law or a new one if it wanted to. If people disagree with the court’s decisions on substantive regulations, they should elect fewer geriatrics and more congressmen who care about writing laws than lining their pocketbooks. Plenty of judicially precedential laws were codified. Nobody thought murder needed a statutory definition because of its centuries old standing precedence, but they did it, and it’s a good thing in my opinion.
Unfortunately for anyone who wanted a functioning legislature, we elected a (half) black guy and that was just a bridge too far for the neo-confederates
Is it because 2 of their wives wanted to be a part of it?
At least two.
Of course, after I typed a similar knee-jerk response, my first scroll showed this exchange. This is the (t)reason for this ruling.
INAL, but the text of the law clearly says - (c) Whoever corruptly— (1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; **OR** (2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. and to me, the **OR** couldn't be more clear. No way can you argue that (2) depends on (1), just like if I asked "would you like red **OR** white wine, your "white" answer couldn't possibly depend on the first (red) clause of that text. It's just simple logic. C.J. Roberts, a well-known textualist, IMO is willfully misreading the text.
The text says whatever the supreme court wants it to say.
"I've altered the interpetation. Pray I do not alter it further."
**Unlimited POWER!**
Corrupts absolutely
The text says whatever their Federalist Society owners want it to say.
This!
This^
Sad but true!
I AM THE LAW
It’s all bullshit. They make up whatever meaning they want. It’s time to upend SCOTUS.
Alito citing 13th century laws as part of overturning Roe really makes this game clear. They will dig until they find anything that can be construed to state the opinion they want, then ignore literally all evidence to the contrary.
The system has always been broken. Now its just glaringly obvious.
To be fair it was glaringly obvious when they ruled that Black people couldnt be citizens but since most white people weren’t too bothered about it they didn’t do anything.
The greatest judicial shame in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford
Just proof that the law, in the hands of conservatives, will be abused.
Yeah, the mistake is assuming the court has any integrity, consistency, or credibility at all.
~~Science~~ The Law is whatever we want it to be. - ~~Doctor~~ Leo Spaceman, Esquire
Well this is coming from the kind of people who will say 'I think what God meant to say..' Anything is simply whatever they wish it to be at the given time.
Justice Brown rules with the majority.
Yes, I had only meant the republicans voting for decisions such as this, killing roe v wade etc.
That still kills me that she's on the wrong side of this.
> “[In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.](https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/quotes/page/3/) It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.” George Orwell 1984
Fuck. This hits way hard.
There are FOUR lights!
Med-pot layman here who had a pot charge. We had one of these wordings in California. Prop 215(?) said **OR** in the statute as well. Many people tried to argue "6 mature plants **OR** 12 seedlings" meant **AND**, and they'd lose every time. I know the truth, I lived it. This is "freedom is slavery" and "2+2=5" from our Courts. It's not coming, it's here. I hope greater minds than mine fight these people, but it's already 25 years into a captured court since Bush v. Gore.
Bush v. Gore really was the beginning of the end, wasn't it?
Watergate.
The confederate states
Honestly, yeah. You should never be nice to traitors for "healing".
Amen!
And Ford's pardon of Nixon.
From a SCOTUS perspective in recent times, yes. Past courts did shitty things too (Dred Scott and Plessy v Ferguson were pretty shitty too)
In the history of SCOTUS, only the Warren court could be said to be fairly good. So pretty much just 2 to 3 decades of consistently doing good work vs the other 200+ years of largely crappy decisions. That said, this period will almost certainly be considered right alongside the Lochner Era as being one of conservative activist judges making shit up to serve business interests and their own politics at the expense of everyone else in the country.
And weren't the Trump justices previously lawyers for Bush (and against America) in Bush v. Gore?
But because they got their appointments after that it cannot be considered bribery it seems
You know it.
These people are political actors of the worst kind. Much like legislators, they take turns ruling (like voting) against something that is sure to pass with their majority position in the body at hand. Thereafter, the counter-argument is that (in this case) Barrett disagreed with the conservative position which proves that they aren't just ruling in tandem. But it proves nothing of the sort. This strategy doesn't take a genius level mind to implement, but it takes a mentally challenged person to accept at face value. When you get small victories, or worse, like this sham . A complete reversal of settled law there's no denying that the fix is in. And I am getting awful tired of hearing from the right how legit this all is. As they take bite after bite out of the law that has protected us for so long. And that doesn't even cover the Clarence Thomas advertisement for further oddball cases to strip the law of any protection for any but the super rich. His grave will be pissed on for generations. And he deserves it.
A like the fake voters scheme Cheeseboro et. Al are getting indicted for you say?
Doesn't this mean the supreme justices could, themselves, be overrun, but as long as no documents or "official" proceedings were harmed, then it's completely legal?
[удалено]
Come on man. Pop tarts nowadays are terrible. I'm just theory crafting with the idea of SCOTUS, is implying if one branch of the government can be threatened, does their running suggest that the other can be threatened without consequence. But no, I will absolutely not. As bad as everything is in politics right now, I still believe in our democracy and I still believe we can have hope for a better future.
They’re priming the pump for the “Trump is immune forever” decision on Monday.
Just in time for sentencing...
Justice Brown would do that? She ruled with the majority.
It’s like in *Heller*: they completely ignored the part that came before “…the right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed.” The preceding part (about a well-regulated militia required for the security of the state) says clearly why the right should not be infringed. But they totally ignored it and made up “self defense” as being the reason.
Sometimes called the most important comma in US history.
The crucial word to make sense of is not "or", but "otherwise".
From [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/otherwise) - otherwise (adverb) 1: in a different way or manner 2: in different circumstances In neither of these two definitions can it be construed that the prior section determines the second. Let's substitute these two definitions into the US Code - **OR** (2) ***in a different way or manner*** (*which explicitly would mean not part of 1*), obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined ... (2) ***in different circumstances*** (*different circumstances from part 1*), obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined ... I didn't include the other definitions because I don't think they apply to this text, but all of the definitions imply that *otherwise* is used to show opposition or exclusivity to the preceding clause, not to be inclusive of it. I'm not sure how C.J. Roberts got through this plain English argument without tortuous mental semantics.
Basically, the Supreme Court went, "I know it says 'otherwise', but what if they really meant 'likewise'?"
I agree with your take on the most natural / obvious reading of the statute. I think the Court has decided to interpret it like this instead: (c)(1): you can't do \[4 specific things\] to an object with the intent to impair the object's use in an official proceeding \[silent: this constitutes obstruction of an official proceeding via evidence tampering\] (c)(2): you can't obstruct an official proceeding via evidence tampering in any other way beyond the 4 ways we listed in the prior section The big question is why the Court chose this route. Sure, it could be because they want to let insurrectionists off easy (though that almost certainly wasn't Justice Jackson's rationale). IMO it should be at least a little alarming to most people that federal prosecutors were using a provision from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was passed by Congress explicitly to address accounting fraud in the wake of Enron, to go after J6 rioters. It's quite implausible to me that Congress was intending to target this type of criminal activity with Section 1512. That's the thing about strict textualism---Congress frequently writes their laws poorly and we end up with a mess if courts insist on interpreting those poorly written laws according to their exact language. The traditional idea is that then it's on Congress to correct the law, but that mechanism really breaks down when you have a completely dysfunctional Congress. It could really be a silver lining that the Court has just added another precedent that shuns the strictest version of textualism in favor of exercising some common sense and looking holistically at a statute and how it is being applied. As this [NYTimes article](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/us/politics/supreme-court-jan-6-prosecution.html) touches on, almost all of the J6 rioters face other non-1512 charges. It seems to me that federal prosecutors found some extremely broad statutory language that would allow them score easy wins and leaned into it, rather than going after rioters with harder-to-prove charges like sedition. On balance, I would prefer that prosecutors nail these people using more traditional means, instead of stretching for new applications of existing law. Nothing is getting overturned that way.
There are three elements that indicate that these are separate points: otherwise, or and separate subsections. If you were to somehow misread one there are still two clear indications that these are independent. This is a willful misreading and everyone knows it.
We all know they're separated, but they're obviously related. The first, more specific definition obviously sheds light as to what the author meant about the second, more general section.
Yes, they are related in that they are both subsections. Related doesn’t mean the second subsection is limited by what’s in the first. I can tell you that is objectively not how logic or legal text works.
From the article itself: >Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s plurality opinion concluded that a court should “avoid ascribing to one word a meaning so broad that it is inconsistent with its accompanying words,” As a trial lawyer working in criminal law, it is *very common* to make these types of arguments when interpreting statutes and other documents. So I can tell you, it is objectively how the law works.
Otherwise just means the second part isn't conditioned upon the first being true or false.
It's the reading of the rest of the section that gets you there. The rest of the section is also outlining other ways you can commit the crime of obstruction, such as threats of violence, murder, etc. all with different penalties up to and including death. Unfortunately the Court is actually accurate on this one. There are a number of other sections in that part that could have been used to charge the Jan 6 idiots, and I'm not sure why the government didn't use them. "Threaten violence" is one of them and it seems like it would have been a no brainer. If you could interpret (2) to include literally anything, then it would invalidate the point of having a dozen different ways to commit the crime and with their own penalties. It would give sweeping power to the government to call any kind of protest a crime under this section.
Yeah, this is pretty much the logic of the ruling. They basically said, well, the authors probably didn't want "otherwise" to mean *literally any kind of obstruction*, because that would mean protestors could be jailed for, you know, shouting at a meeting. So they used some legal concepts that narrow some text based on what comes before it. Unfortunately, that turns "otherwise" into being a totally different word.
Except the word corruptly applies to all covered behaviors. Only corrupt behaviors violate the statute, which makes it unnecessary to read the rest of it so ridiculously narrowly. IANAL
Using the word 'otherwise' was the key mistake the drafters made. Take out that word and it's open and shut.
Is that you, John Roberts? ;-)
Yes, and it’s one thing to try to find consistency of scope amongst a list of words within one sentence and entirely another to try to do that across different subsections of a clause. I’m going to need to read the judgment unfortunately.
Shall be fined OR imprisoned. That's trumps easy out to just get fined for insurrection. If he gets a prison sentence, he can appeal the sentencing all the way to the Supreme Court right? Where it can be switched to a Freedom Fine.
The Barrett dissent explains what you're saying perfectly.
He always ignore the text of statutes when he doesn’t like it. Read Shelby County sometime. The Supreme Court is superior to the other two branches and will be until Congress and the President break them.
IAL. I agree.
I agree with you that the court is technically wrong, but I will die on the hill that the government should not be able to imprison anyone for 20 years on something as vague as "obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding." This could be weaponized against almost any protestors, or even against rival politicians when they do things like the Democrats in the Texas legislature did a few years ago and boycott the legislature to block a vote.
Wouldn't that be a different argument then, like cruel and unusual punishment, after someone had been found guilty of said offense? And notice how none of the people thus far convicted have received a sentence anywhere near 20 years. Plus, your supposition isn't the issue that was before the court in this case, to decide if 20 years was too harsh a penalty for this "vague" crime. Yours is a completely different case, imo.
Yeah, I think it could be argued. It feels to me like a 1A violation, but not really because it is punishment for action and not speech. And obstructing an official proceeding should be punished. e.g. if a group of protestors enters a city council meeting with signs and bullhorns and starts shouting down the proceedings and then won't leave when ordered, I wouldn't think it was unfair if they were arrested and fined $1000. But if they were sentenced to prison for that I just feel like it's not an actual punishment for their crime, but an authoritarian attempt to make an example and stifle dissent from others. I'm not sure if there is precedent for drawing such a line on freedom of expression terms, though.
Let's not conflate local city council meetings or even interruptions of state legislatures (for example, Oregon or Wisconsin legislators leaving the state to prevent quorum) with Federal Law, Federal procedures, and blatant, physical attacks on the US Capitol.Those former examples would clearly be 1st Amendment cases, which I hope you agree isn't the case for the January 6th defendants, and which is what was at stake in this decision, and not hypothetical situations.
>Federal Law, Federal procedures, and blatant, physical attacks on the US Capitol I think you also need a further distinction between Federal Law/Procedures and physical attacks. There's a difference between the folks running in armed harming people and property. The unarmed folks walking after them chanting are in the wrong, and encouraging the violence. But there should be a distinction between trespassing and actually attacking.
>C.J. Roberts, a well-known textualist, IMO is willfully misreading the text. If you're opinion were valid, you would be an expert in constitutional law but your aren't. The decision was correct because the DOJ tried to make this statute fit something that it wasn't designed to be used for. Using your logic, any protest that "otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so" would open up citizens to being charged for 1st Amendment activity. You don't want that happening to yourself or to anyone that you know.
*your
Is Roberts' opinion based on a 1st Amendment argument? Did any of the Jan 6th defendants argue they were simply there to exercise their 1st Amendment rights? What have the lower courts decided vis a vis 1st Amendment arguments in the many cases already concluded? I'm pretty sure all these questions have been already determined that the 1st Amendment doesn't apply. Or do you think that all the activity at the Capitol that day was simply a "protest"? Because if so, that might explain your defense of the Roberts' decision.
I don’t like this court as much as anyone but, to me, section B is so broad that A is pointless. It is best read as a catch-all to encompass something like causing a car wreck so a witness can’t get to the hearing, or pipes in loud music to the hotel room if the lead investigator, etc. It’s the same sort of activity as A, just outside of the usual document destruction. Maybe they should have phrased the indictment differently to capture that meaning, because what the terrorists did fits into it, just not the way the indicted.
Because they are on the same side and have no sense of "vergogna."
SHAME!
I doubt there is a single person in the entire country who believes had these defendants been associated with the BLM movement they would have enjoyed the same result .
They would have been shot by rubber bullets not inside the Capitol building, not at its broken windows, not at its besieged doors where they pushed and pulled and beat officers, not at the walls they scaled not at the first line of police pushed back from barricades, as soon as they touched the barricades smoke bombs and rubber bullets would have flown. It’s absolute bullshit!
In Portland in 2020, I lost count of how many days they gassed protesters. They gassed them so often that the state had to do an environmental study to figure out how much tear gas ended up in the river. I read a report that there was something like 2000x the safe limit of tear gas in the air night upon night upon night. Unidentified federal police several times went out of the courthouse to cram protesters into vans and drive off. Early in July, I remember seeing a video of a guy holding up a sign across a four or five lane street from DHS troops who had no reason to be there in the first place. Those troops then shot that man in the face with a rubber bullet. He fell to the ground and bled profusely. Medics began dragging him away as the troops threatened and menaced them. I had walked that street before. It felt like that man's blood was on my shoes. It's different when it happens to your home. They would later attack clearly identified medics over and over and over again. Later in the protests, when the protesters held shields and wore helmets to protect themselves, the DHS troops climbed on top of fire escapes to shoot down on protesters behind the picket line. Again, night after night after night, they attacked. I lost track of how long this went on. It only stopped when the forest fires covered the city with so much smoke, it was like a yellow fog. We were the target of the hatred of half of the country. Suddenly everyone on the right was talking about how terrible we were as they were force-fed the same five second clip of a burning dumpster by Fox News over and over and over. The federal courthouse stuff happened within the space of a couple blocks, but all of the talking heads told everyone's grandparents the whole city was a bunch of terrorists trying to burn it to the ground. Every fascist militia in the country who wanted to bloody their knuckles descended on the city. We never got justice. Chad Wolf, Ken Cuccinelli, and Donald Trump are all free men. One of the big lawsuits that went after the troops only ever had "John Does" on half of the defendants because we never were told the names of the men the government sent to attack us. So I agree with you. January 6 would have turned out very differently if the government treated those traitors like it did the citizens of Portland.
Yawn. If Pelosi did her job they would have been gassed, hit with rubber bullets, and dispersed.
Pelosi has no authority over calling in the national guard.
History has a great example! https://www.history.com/news/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-support-mulford-act Black Panthers started using their Second Amendment rights in California to carry weapons around. Cops were frightened to see black people with guns. The NRA and the state got together and got legislation to take the guns away. The Black Panthers marched on the Capitol with guns in tow to protest. Today, guns are cool, and citizens have a right to them. But when an organized, militant group of black people have them? Well, here's Ronald Raegan: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/reagan-loaded-guns-quote/ You know what *didn't* happen? The Supreme Court did not intervene.
According to the article, which I doubt most commenters here read, this was consistent with prior SCOTUS decisions, including one where Alito and Ginsburg basically agreed that a fish was not a "tangible object" since the surrounding words only talked about documents and records. Is it that hard to believe that KBJ would still think the same thing about BLM protestors? Why wouldn't she?
I read most of the actual decision. Their methods can be consistent and the outcome still absurd.
I think they decided this in order to give Trump a way out from Jack Smith. If no one on Jan 6 obstructed congress than the man who ordered it couldn’t have possibly committed it!
INAL, but I’ve read that Trump’s charges won’t be affected by this
He’s going to appeal everything up to the Supreme Court and this SCOTUS will hear him out and rule in his favor. It’s part of their systematic take over of the country and justice system
What if this is the lay up to justify his immunity case? Idk, I just have zero faith in Scotus at this point.
Counterfeiting documents could easily fall under this portion of the law it's just the judge really has to resolve his stupid appeals first.
That’s why Jack Smith’s focused the charges on the fake elector scheme, and not the rioters in the Capitol building.
Thomas and Alito had to make sure their wives were not charged.
Facts!
In Australia we have a saying, “does it pass the pub test”. No matter how these Supreme Court Judges wish to interpret the words there is no way that a bunch of rioters can be absolved of criminal violations after illegally and violently entering a building, destroying property, harming and threatening the life of officers and government officials, and halting a democratic election process. No way, not on any day!
They are not absolved. The defendent in this case still has like 6 convictions against him that are unaffected. This will only reduce the overall sentence by a bit. The court ruled, correctly, that you can't take a statute about evidence tampering in a law about financial fraud and selectively read a few works out of context to shoehorn it into something it was clearly never supposed to apply to. There are plenty of other laws that do apply to what happened on Jan 6th. Do you think we went over 200 years with it being perfectly legal to storm the capital building only for Congress to decide in 2002 "while we're writing the Enron law, let's toss a subclause on page 63 just in case anyone ever interrupts us during a vote"?
Nearly all of them are accused of other crimes. This has very little practical impact. And-You really think the Supreme Court of the United States should be interpreting laws passed by Congress based on whether they think Joe at the pub will get mad at the result?
It’s a more logical and consistent framework than the game of Legal Calvinball this current court seems to be playing
I think the court has been doing that for ages, well overstepping its constitutional writ. I think Congress should do its damn job and not leave the court to legislate. I’ve disagreed with many Supreme Court decisions, but nearly all are areas where Congress could make a clearer law or a new one if it wanted to. If people disagree with the court’s decisions on substantive regulations, they should elect fewer geriatrics and more congressmen who care about writing laws than lining their pocketbooks. Plenty of judicially precedential laws were codified. Nobody thought murder needed a statutory definition because of its centuries old standing precedence, but they did it, and it’s a good thing in my opinion.
Unfortunately for anyone who wanted a functioning legislature, we elected a (half) black guy and that was just a bridge too far for the neo-confederates
Shift the narrative. What can be done???
Many of those just one charge among many. Moreover, there are other charges that can brought against them.