DOJ Racks Up 90% Failure Rate In Inauguration Protest Prosecutions, Dismisses Final Defendants
from the win-some,-lose-a-whole-lot-more dept
The DOJ, after flailing wildly for most of the last 18 months, has dismissed the remaining defendants in its disastrous inauguration day protest prosecutions.
The US attorney's office in Washington, DC, announced Friday that it is dismissing charges against the remaining defendants charged in connection with anti-Trump demonstrations on Inauguration Day.
Police arrested 234 people on Jan. 20, 2017. Twenty-one people pleaded guilty. The final dismissal notice on Friday came after several trials in which prosecutors were unable to secure any convictions — defendants were either acquitted or jurors failed to reach a verdict.
The government still managed to land 21 convictions, even though its statement suggests it feels this isn't nearly enough, what with "$100,000 in damage to public and private property" occurring during the protests. It certainly isn't much considering the DOJ's original (human) dragnet held more than 200 arrestees.
But that wasn't the only dragnet the DOJ deployed. On its way to dismissing charges against 90% of the defendants, the DOJ also:
- Demanded access to the identifying info of all 1.2 million visitors to the Disrupt J20 website
- Demanded information from the accounts of 6,000 Facebook users
- Claimed arrested protesters were "hiding behind the First Amendment"
- Stated in court that the "beyond a reasonable doubt" jury instruction "doesn't mean too much"
- Hid dozens of videos it planned to use as evidence from defendants
- Attempted to prosecute journalists for attending the protests and documenting them
- Still wants to be able to jail people for discussing protests/rioting, via broad conspiracy charges
This is how it ends for the DOJ, which has largely lost its bids to install a chilling effect via over-broad "rioting" prosecutions. While it's true property was damaged during the protests, rounding up a couple hundred protesters is the opposite of targeted prosecution. If the DOJ hadn't been shutdown in its attempt to amass personal information on more than a million website visitors and Facebook members, the number of defendants would have been even bigger. The eventual dismissals would also have skyrocketed, so the government probably should be happy it walked away with anything at all.
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Filed Under: 1st amendment, disrupt j20, doj, free speech, inauguration, j20, protests
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Sure about that?
This is how it ends for the DOJ, which has largely lost its bids to install a chilling effect via over-broad "rioting" prosecutions.
Whether they won or, as is the case, fell flat on their faces matters less for instilling a chilling effect than the fact that they were willing to do so in the first place.
'You've got good odds of having the charges dropped or a jury finding you not guilty over a year later' isn't exactly the most comforting thought for someone who might be thinking about joining a protest. Throughout the process they made clear what they were willing to do, and the fact that they were gently chided for parts of it doesn't stop them in any way from doing any of it again should they decide to crack down in the future for whatever reason.
Much like copyright trolling winning the case is just an extra, nice to have but not actually needed. The goal is to make it clear that fighting back at all is going to cost, and cost dearly, and that message they've made crystal clear.
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Re: Sure about that?
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more surveilance statehood
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Of course this becomes an article on Techdirt
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If the political roles were reversed—if this were a Democrat-controlled DOJ going after Republican/right-wing protesters—how dismissive of this issue would you be?
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There's a protest to get to.
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I dunno if pointing this out is going to be of any help, but seriously... you are the very thing you claim to hate.
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Round and round we go...
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Because that was precisely what happened to Obama after his first two years in office, thanks to Republican voters. Or did you forget all about birtherism, the Tea Party, the opposition to the Affordable Care Act, the stolen Supreme Court nomination, and Donald Trump?
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Waaaiiiit...
https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/09/politics/donald-trump-birther/index.html
So wait... does HRC own Donald Trump?
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Re: Of course this becomes an article on Techdirt
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Re: lol, anti-blue-dude, why don't you make an account?
rioters, you could like get an icon from genghis
khan like drinking blood out a skull, cool
dude, it's you
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I too remember middle school...dude.
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Re: Re: lol, anti-blue-dude, why don't you make an account?
“I have broken more Elton John records, he seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record. Because you know, look I only need this space. They need much more room. For basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a lot of room. We don’t need it. We have people in that space. So we break all of these records. Really we do it without like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical: the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth. Right? The brain, more important than the mouth, is the brain. The brain is much more important.”
I rest my case.
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Question for lawyer in the crowd
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Re: Question for lawyer in the crowd
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Re: Re: Question for lawyer in the crowd
If I had been there, and arrested, I would already have a lawyer, and would ask him/her. For the rest of us non lawyers, seeing into the density that is 'the Law' might be helpful.
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Re: Re: Re: Question for lawyer in the crowd
In theory - "the law" is publicly out there so anyone can see into such density. Any given court case is rather dependent on the judge(s) along the way and is dependent on the 'sharpness' of the attorneys involved and what should be a slam-dunk becomes a loss unless you are willing to go to appeal and had the sharpness at the 1st level. Heck, the laziness level of attorneys involved can sink a case, if the Judge allows it.
Lets say you gain this sight into density. Now, do you have the $50-$150K for a fight on the State level? How about the $300K+ at the fed level or the $1M+ for a fed appeal?
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Re: Re: Question for lawyer in the crowd
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At last and at least Techdirt admits was actual property damage.
Prosecutions of actions in riot are ALWAYS difficult to pin on persons. Sometimes different laws apply. In the past (and likely future, way you kids keep going crazy), shoot-to-kill orders have been legal. Civil society MUST stop rioting at some point. -- You should look up the "Riot Act" in English law, if you want to see how seriously rioting is dealt with.
Anyhoo, I'm NOT dismayed at results except by Techdirt's ongoing glee that property was damaged by barbarians and at least some got away with it. Techdirt always sides with those breaking the laws of civil society.
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Re: At last law upheld
It *seems* that way, but I don't want to assume.
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If the DOJ could not pin actions within a riot on specific people, it should have said so instead of trying to prosecute 200 people for a crime that the majority of that group may have only witnessed.
I doubt Techdirt writers were happy to see the property damage. (If you can cite any instance of their celebrating said property damage, please do so.) They were much happier to see people arrested on overblown charges that the DOJ could not make stick finally free from their legal nightmare. Did some of those people “get away with” breaking the law? Maybe. Can you prove it? The DOJ certainly couldn’t; if it could have made the charges stick in more than the relative handful of cases where it secured guilty pleas, we would have seen more guilty pleas.
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Re: At last and at least Techdirt admits was actual property damage.
Anyhoo, I'm NOT dismayed at results except by Techdirt's ongoing glee that property was damaged by barbarians and at least some got away with it.
I'm not dismayed by the results either. 21 out of 234 is not even a 10% success rate. Law enforcement did a piss poor job, made themselves look like fools, and north of 90% of those accused are free.
Then again, what do you care? Trump lambastes the FBI on a near daily basis. Why on earth should anyone trust the DOJ? They're corrupt as all fuck, remember?
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Re: Re: At last and at least Techdirt admits was actual property damage.
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It’s amazing that you have enough cognitive dissonance
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Re: It’s amazing that you have enough cognitive dissonance
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Re: It’s amazing that you have enough cognitive dissonance
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If I read TFA correctly, the DOJ never won a case in a contested court of law. Their only wins were in the pre-trial negotiating rooms where they managed to talk 21 suspects into pleading guilty. Either those were the folks that really did some of the damage or they got real poor legal advice.
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As to your second point, it does seem likely, and it makes folks wonder about the process where deal making and winning rather justice is the point of negotiations between prosecutors and the accused. These 21 may be guilty, and if they are then they got a deal rather than what a court might have sentenced them to. On the other hand, what if they were just frightened, and as you point out, poorly or even not represented, then the concept of justice has been harmed once again.
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It's apparently not illegal to serve as a protective screen for rioters, and because the actual rioters can't be sorted out from the screeners upon the expected mass arrests, then everyone gets to go free.
Although it's an obvious mob victory, don't expect it to last. Police will simply revise their tactics, probably with sniper teams of some sort. Hopefully it'll be something like paintball rounds and not live bullets like Israel treats street protests, but you never know.
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Please cite, with proper references, the proof that any of the protesters arrested by the DOJ planned to use “black bloc” tactics as a cover for starting a riot and damaging property before the protests ever began.
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That actually is illegal; that would be conspiracy. In fact, if you read the article, it even mentions them trying for conspiracy charges.
The real issue, of course, is that your little fantasy scenario didn't actually happen.
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Correction
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Re: Correction
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rename DOJ
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How many were because the charges kept getting piled on to make them plea?
How many did anything beyond be there & be expected to take the blame for all the bad actors?
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Indeed...
Still, it means that in terms of actual adversarial courtroom battles, their success rate wasn't 10%, it was 0%.
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WTF??
Unless they saw and Caught those causing the damage..
Otherwise this is a 1 day hold in jail..
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Only 10% guilty pleas?
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