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 on 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 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 “criminalise 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.” In all, 52 rioters have been convicted and sentenced on obstruction charges, with 27 currently incarcerated.

Meaning of ‘otherwise’

At the core of the case was how to interpret the word “otherwise” in the relevant statute, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was enacted after the destruction of documents in the 2001 Enron scandal.

This imposes up to 20 years in prison for whoever corruptly tampers with documents in an attempt to prevent them from being used in official proceedings, or “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.”

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2024