It seems that facing consequences for their actions isn’t something that many Jan. 6 insurrectionists are familiar with. “D.C. is a city that, as a whole, feels that it has been the victim of a crime,” the defense attorneys in two of the Oath Keepers’ trials argued in court. As if their clients were not actually traitorous criminals who were caught in the act on live, national television.
So far, prosecutors and judges are not swayed. “In any U.S. jurisdiction, most prospective jurors will have heard about the events of January 6, and many will have various disqualifying biases,” U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote in denying one request. Finding an impartial jury in Washington, D.C., is not impossible. It’s been done. The real problem for the defendants is that they’re being convicted, even as potential jurors are disqualified.
As this report from AP details, so far 838 people have been charged in the insurrection, and 335 convicted on charges ranging from “low-level misdemeanors to felony seditious conspiracy.” One has been acquitted, while 498 cases are still pending. “Already more than 300 people across the U.S. have pleaded guilty to crimes stemming from the deadly riot,” AP reports. “Collectively, 72 jurors have unanimously convicted six Jan. 6 defendants of all 35 counts in their indictments.”
That’s a pretty good win record for the prosecutors, but since the attack was, again, carried out on live national television and many of the defendants put their own damned crimes out on their own damned social media in real time and in the days after, what in the hell did they expect?
They expected to get away with it, clearly, which shows just how deeply broken everything is in this country right now.
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The defendants are lucky that the pool of potential jurors are actual patriots, with a belief in our system of government and justice. Anthony Robert Williams, a Michigan man who has proclaimed he has “absolutely no remorse” for his actions on Jan. 6, was convicted last week of “obstructing an official proceeding of Congress, a felony, and misdemeanors related to trespassing on Capitol or restricted grounds and disorderly conduct.” He was convicted after a four-day trial in Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell’s court. Howell refused Williams’ efforts to have the trial moved to Michigan.
“One by one,” AP reports, “the judge questioned 49 prospective jurors before seating 12 jurors and two alternates” in jury selection starting on June 27. One prospective juror told the judge that she was friends with an officer who suffered broken ribs in the riot. Asked if that connection would prevent her from being fair and impartial, she answered “My Christianity says, ‘No,’ but my feelings say, ‘Yes.’”
Another potential juror is married to a USA Today reporter, and told the judge that Jan. 6 is a regular topic at home and in their group of friends, including some who work at the Capitol. “It would be very difficult to separate those,” he told Howell, who excused him. Another candidate identified herself as “very left biased,” and a former resident of New York City who has had a “deep-rooted” dislike for Donald Trump from way before his presidency. She was disqualified.
Residents of D.C., who are finally getting a chance to actually have a say in something, are actually stepping up and saying when they shouldn’t be the ones to do so. Even when they were as victimized by the Jan 6 attack as anyone, not to mention all the ongoing nonsense of trucker convoys and MAGA protests, which have been violent and disruptive since the days after the election in 2020.
They’re the patriots, the ones who tell the truth about their ability to provide justice in the case of the seditionists. And, being stateless, they don’t even have the full benefits of citizenship.
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