A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. has decided that hundreds of January 6 offenders were sentenced to excessive jail terms based on abuse of a statute regarding “the interference with the administration of justice.”
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled on Friday that defendant Larry Brock, a retired Air Force colonel sentenced to two years in federal prison for peacefully demonstrating in a building, was wrongfully sentenced.
According to Circuit Judge Millett, who wrote the court’s ruling, alleged interference with Congress’ certification of the presidential election in 2021 does not qualify for a sentence increase. Thus, the court affirmed Brock’s conviction but disagreed with his sentence.
“Regarding Brock’s sentence, we hold that the ‘administration of justice’ enhancement does not apply to interference with the legislative process of certifying electoral votes,” Judge Millett concluded.
“For the foregoing reasons, we affirm Brock’s conviction under 18 U.S.C § 1512(c)(2), but we vacate Brock’s sentence for his Section 1512(c)(2) conviction and remand to the district
37 court for resentencing without the application of Section 2J1.2(b)(2)’s sentencing enhancement,” the court ordered.
The massive court decision might have an impact on hundreds of January 6 defendants who were charged with the Biden DOJ’s “obstruction of an official proceeding” crime, which is based on a dubious legal theory derived from the Enron corruption crisis. Dozens of January 6 offenders were sentenced to severe federal prison sentences as a result of the felony, even though they would have been charged with misdemeanors.
The Supreme Court is also considering the legitimacy of the Biden DOJ’s use of the “obstruction of an official proceeding” law.
Attorney William Shipley provided extensive legal analysis of the impact of this ruling.
“HUGE decision out of DC Circuit this morning saying the proceedings before Congress on Jan. 6 did not involve the ‘administration of justice’ as that phrase is used in the Sentencing Guidelines,” Shipley, who also posted about it on his Substack entitled Shipwreckedcrew’s Port-O-Call, commented on X.
“This will be moot if the SCOTUS throws out the 1512 count altogether in the Fischer (case),” Shipley added. “But this has been a MASSIVE point of conflict between defense counsel and the DOJ/Judges in sentencing J6 defendants on 1512 counts.”
“That was the ‘go to’ felony for DOJ early on, and the reason for that is the Govt was asking for — and getting ’11’ levels of enhancements,” he continued. “This is real ‘inside baseball’ stuff, but here is how it worked. The ‘Base Offense’ level for 1512 is ’14’.”
“The higher that number, the longer the recommended sentence,” he said. “The Govt was asking for, and the Judges — except one — were giving two different enhancements to that ’14’. Both enhancements involved interfering with the ‘due administration of justice’. An ‘8’ level enhancement for violence. Another ‘3’ level enhancement if proceedings were actually interfered with. The application of these two enhancements increased the offense level to 25.”
“For someone with no criminal history, the recommended sentencing range for a Level 14 is 15-21 months,” he went on. “For someone with no criminal history, the recommended sentencing range for a Level 25 is 57-71 months. Difference is 1.5 years and over 5 years in prison. By pleading guilty, the range was lowered to 41-51 months for ‘acceptance of responsibility’.”
“The Govt plea offers REQUIRED that defendants agree that the two sentencing enhancements apply,” he added. “If a defendant refused he/she could go to trial where the convictions are nearly 100%. If the 1512 counts are throw out by SCOTUS, this will not matter because most of those defendants will be entitled to resentencing based on a calculation that doesn’t involve the two enhancements.”
“But even if SCOTUS upholds the 1512 convictions, this ruling could require a huge number of cases to come back to District Court for resentencing — with the new sentences being much shorter than the sentences that were imposed,” Shipley said. “By my recollection, only one Judge ruled that these two enhancements did not apply because congressional proceedings did not involve the ‘Administration of Justice.’ Every other judge engaged in various forms of linguistic gymnastics to twist the words to fit the facts.”
Therefore, Special Counsel Jack Smith is in jeopardy of watching hundreds of J6 cases get blown up due to prosecutorial abuse of the “obstruction of an official proceeding” charge, which just-so-happens to be one of the charges facing former President Donald Trump.
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