Federal appeals court rules felony charge can be used in Jan. 6 cases

A federal court ruled on Friday that U.S. officials can use a felony charge of obstruction of an official proceeding to prosecute defendants from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. 

A panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided in a 2-1 ruling that prosecutors do have broad authority to bring the felony charge. Conviction for the felony can bring up to 20 years in prison, while a misdemeanor conviction of trespassing or illegally demonstrating in the Capitol would only carry a one-year prison sentence at most. 

The statute that was debated in the case states that those who “corruptly” alter, destroy or conceal a record, document or other object or tries to do so with the intent to impair the object’s ability to be used in a proceeding or “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so” is guilty of violating federal law and could be fined, imprisoned or both. 

The decision will likely affect many cases of those who participated in the Jan. 6 attack. 

The key word in the statue up for debate is “otherwise,” which The Washington Post reported that 14 judges overseeing riot-related cases in Washington, D.C. federal court have interpreted to include rioters who tried to prevent Congress from certifying President Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. 

One district judge, Carl Nichols, had interpreted that “otherwise” only refers to different types of tampering with documents. He ruled that a defendant needed to have taken “some action with respect to a document, record or other object” to have obstructed an official proceeding based on the law. 

The Justice Department appealed his decision, leading to the appeals court ruling. 

Judge Florence Pan, who wrote the majority opinion, said in her ruling that Nichols was the only one to view the statue differently. 

“Although the opinions of those district judges are not binding on us, the near unanimity of the rulings is striking, as well as the thorough and persuasive reasoning in the decision,” she wrote. 

Circuit Appeals Judge Gregory Katsas dissented, arguing that prosecutors were interpreting the statue too broadly. He wrote that the law had been in place for decades but had only been used until the Jan. 6 cases to prosecute people accused of damaging evidence. 

The ruling overruled a lower court judge’s decision to dismiss the felony charge in three cases against defendants. The three can appeal to the full appeals court or the Supreme Court. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.