US Supreme Court rules in favour of January 6 rioters

WASHINGTON: Prosecutors overstepped in charging January 6 rioters with obstruction for trying to prevent certification of the 2020 presidential election, the US Supreme Court said Friday in a case that could see dozens of convictions overturned.

The matter was brought to the court in the case of a former police officer Joseph Fischer, a supporter of former president Donald Trump who entered the Capitol in Washington, DC with hundreds of others on January 6, 2021.

Writing the opinion for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said prosecutors´ interpretation of the law would “criminalize a broad swath of prosaic conduct, exposing activists and lobbyist(s) to decades in prison.”

The government “must establish that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or other things used in an official proceeding, or attempted to do so,” he wrote. The case was decided 6-3, with Ketanji Brown Jackson joining with the court´s conservatives. Amy Coney Barrett, appointed by Trump, penned the dissent, which was joined by liberal judges Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

It now heads back to a lower court, which will decide whether Fischer´s indictment can still stand in light of the narrower interpretation of “obstruction.”