January 6 riot prosecutions continuing to spotlight realities of federal criminal justice case processing

January 20, 2022

This morning I saw two interesting, though not especially surprising, reviews of some of federal criminal justice realities being put in the spotlight by the many prosecutions of January 6 rioters. Here are the headlines, links and an excerpt:

From Zoe Tillman at BuzzFeed News, “Alleged Capitol Rioters Are Getting In Trouble For Guns And Other Violations After Going Home: A common theme popping up in violations among those on pretrial release has come from defendants who are reluctant to give up access to firearms.”

[Joshua] Pruitt is one of 11 people charged in connection with the attack on the US Capitol who were ordered into custody after initially being released; eight of those cases involved defendants who violated conditions of their pretrial release. Prosecutors have a pending request to put another defendant behind bars, and BuzzFeed News identified at least 16 cases where judges tightened restrictions or issued warnings after finding defendants failed to be in full compliance with the letter, or spirit, of their release conditions.

The vast majority of people charged in the Jan. 6 investigation have been allowed to go home while their cases are pending; there are more than 550 defendants with active cases on pretrial release. Most have stayed out of trouble. The small but steady trickle of problems that have cropped up speak to some of the broader challenges judges have faced in deciding when it’s appropriate to send someone back into the community who is accused of being part of the insurrection but isn’t charged with a specific act of violence or a more serious crime.

From Roger Parloff, “Are Judges Showing Their Political Colors in the Jan. 6 Criminal Cases?“

Earlier this month, a Washington Post analysis suggested that the sentences of Jan. 6 Capitol riot defendants may reflect political bias on the part of the judges handling these cases.

Is the Post right and, more broadly, are judges showing their political colors in other ways involving these defendants? The evidence is mixed. On the one hand, as we’ll see, judges have shown commendable bipartisanship in how they’ve handled certain key issues. At the same time, the Post is clearly onto something. At least an undercurrent of low-grade tribalism has often surfaced in the judges’ handling of these cases….

Here’s what the Post did. It reviewed the 74 sentences that had been handed down by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (where all the Jan. 6 Capitol riot cases are being filed) as of the first anniversary of the event. Then it compared those sentences to the terms the prosecutors had sought.

As an initial matter, the Post found that 49 defendants — two-thirds — received lighter sentences than prosecutors had recommended….

Still, when the paper drilled down, it uncovered some unmistakable trends. Of the 49 sentences that were lighter than prosecutors sought, 30 (61 percent) had been handed down by Republican appointees. This tilt could not be explained by the distribution of Republican appointees on the bench. Of all the judges who have sentenced a Capitol riot defendant, 10 were appointed by Democrats, while eight were appointed by Republicans.

Upon swiveling the tables — homing in on which judges imposed sentences that were harsher than the prosecutors requested — a mirror-image pattern emerged. Of the 11 sentences that were tougher than the government sought, nine (82 percent) were imposed by Democratic appointees.

Some of many prior related posts: