"Prosecutors in the cases against the January 6 demonstrators are starting to run into some judicial pushback: Questions about exculpatory evidence in their possession not turned over as the law demands, lower courts assessing the defendant as more dangerous than the evidence warranted, and most significantly, whether the prosecution is overcharging defendants with the federal crime of obstruction.
Most of the defendants are charged with knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted area -- a fancy way of saying trespassing.
...This hurdle will certainly slow down the impetus to plead guilty -- it’s one thing to face a misdemeanor charge and quite another to risk a 20-year sentence.
If the prosecution believes this conduct had been seditious or an insurrection, they would have charged it.
Obviously, they lack the evidence to sustain such serious claims.
Will they now re-charge for lesser offenses?
We’ll see.
I think Judge Moss might have, as I do, recalled the recent Kavanaugh hearings and their disruption when he asked the government whether it could cite any other cases in which the government charged comparable conduct.
The department could not...Read all!!
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