The U.S. Supreme Court denied this week a push from a Jan. 6/Capitol riot defendant to undo his conviction, in connection to which he was sentenced to two months in jail, which he served.
The defendant is Owen Shroyer, known in part for his involvement in far-right provocateur Alex Jones’ media operation. He’d pleaded guilty to a portion of the allegations before heading to trial on remaining claims. The court provided no written explanation for their rejection of the prospect of hearing out Shroyer’s arguments, a rejection that was instead recapped in simply a long list of similarly positioned cases where certiorari — a process by which the Supreme Court would take up the case — was denied.
Legal journalist Kyle Cheney said that Shroyer was attempting to use First Amendment arguments against his earlier criminal conviction. “He contended that he was in Washington in his capacity as an opinion journalist for InfoWars,” Cheney recapped last year. Shroyer, at the time, faced Trump-nominated federal Judge Timothy Kelly, who rebuffed the defendant’s arguments pointing to his media role.
Still looming over these Capitol riot cases is the repeated proposal from former President Donald Trump for legal help for Capitol riot defendants in the event that he wins this year’s election, propelling him back to the White House. Trump already used presidential powers for federal pardons and similar moves for political allies, like Steve Bannon, when in the White House the first time.
At times, Trump has made no distinction among Capitol riot defendants when putting forward these ideas, seeming to lump those accused of sometimes serious violence, particularly against police officers, with defendants facing non-violent misdemeanor allegations. A D.C. prison facility that Trump’s corner has singled out amid their advocacy for those defendants is known to have consistently housed a large number of defendants specifically facing accusations of violence, something the pro-Trump side has sometimes just glossed over.
