Capitol rioter Daniel Rodriguez, who tased D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officer Michael Fanone amid the January violence, appears to have been unsuccessful in an attempt this week to keep a videotaped confession that he gave to the FBI from being used at his trial. As summarized by HuffPost, “U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson indicated on Tuesday that she’ll likely allow most of Rodriguez’s admission to be used if he goes to trial, finding that only a brief portion of the interview that took place before Rodriguez was advised of his Miranda rights had to be suppressed.” In other words, in the event that Rodriguez’s case goes to trial, jurors will see his admissions — most of them, anyway.
Technically, Jackson hadn’t yet issued a final ruling on the matter as of the time of HuffPost’s report, but she’d made clear that she wasn’t interested in glibly accepting the defendant’s arguments. This matter is serious: it’s not something in which you can wish your way out of consequences. Rodriguez, who’s being held in custody ahead of further proceedings, alleged that agents engaged in “coercive questioning” and failed to appropriately advise him of his rights in connection to their questioning of him. Amid his confession — and after getting advised of his rights — Rodriguez said as follows, admitting to the tasing:
‘I really don’t know exactly why I tased him. I mean, when I tased him, I really ― you know, like, when you do something, you’re like, goddamnit, why did I do that? I just ― I had ― got caught up in the moment and I didn’t really think. I didn’t think about him and his family and what was going to happen to him.’
More specifically, Rodriguez’s side also claimed that the circumstances of his initial, early morning arrest by the FBI constituted coercion, and to that end, HuffPost notes that “Rodriguez’s federal public defender questioned FBI Special Agent Nate Elias, who took custody of Rodriguez at the scene of the arrest and was one of two FBI special agents who questioned Rodriguez at the FBI office,” about elements of the arrest. Federal prosecutor Kimberly Paschall said “that the Miranda warnings that Rodriguez had received after his arrest were meant to combat the coercive nature of an arrest and said that law enforcement could never do their jobs otherwise,” as summarized by HuffPost.
Rodriguez is among over 210 Capitol riot defendants who have been hit with charges of assaulting law enforcement in some capacity. Recently, New Jersey resident Scott Fairlamb became the first person accused of assaulting law enforcement during the riot to be sentenced. Federal Judge Royce Lamberth sentenced Fairlamb to 41 months behind bars, which works out to three years and five months.
