DC Court of Appeals Tosses Novel J6 Sentencing Ruling

The corrupt D.C. court of appeals is walking back one of the abuses district court judges have used to justify excessive sentences for January 6th protestors.

This does not mean that the D.C. Court of Appeals has seen the light. Rather than tossing the convictions outright the court is splitting hairs and tossing parts of the sentencing in hopes that if/when this gets to the Supreme Court, they just don’t toss out all of it.

How it is legal to convict someone on a wrongheaded legal theory and just not sentence them remains to be seen.

The D.C. courts have used novel, untried legal theories in order to justify harsh sentences that likely violate the 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments.

NBC News:

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Friday tossed out a portion of a Jan. 6 defendant's sentence that could affect more than a hundred other cases related to the 2021 attack on the Capitol.

The ruling by a three-judge panel in Washington, D.C., looked at a lower court's "enhanced" sentencing of a defendant over his “substantial interference with the administration of justice” on the day Congress was certifying Joe Biden's victory over Donald Trump. The appeals court ruled that “‘administration of justice’ does not encompass Congress’s role in the electoral certification process.”

The ruling potentially opens the door to the resentencing of Jan. 6 defendants who were hit with similar sentences to that of Larry Brock, who appealed his case to the Washington court. The panel upheld Brock's overall conviction.

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