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In the thread below about the WNBA player who was sentenced for weed possession in Russia, the discussion dovetailed into how January 6th defendants are treated and a couple of people made what to me were eyebrow-raising claims. @anti_dan worried about the fact that J6 defendants could "be held without bail for wandering in", and @The_Nybbler was concerned about how "many of the "rioters" who committed no crime worse than trespassing (in some cases not even entering the building, just supposedly-forbidden parts of the grounds) are getting harsh punishments for political reasons".
As the token defense attorney who cares about criminal justice reform, both concerns piqued my attention. But as far as I can tell, the concerns are fictitious [EDIT: see notes below]. I've previously written about the difficulties inherent with collecting representative data about state crime statistics (tldr: lots of scattered jurisdictions + lack of court record transparencies), and while I've previously whinged about people here being sloppy with their claims about state crime trends, I fully appreciate the reluctance in committing to what can amount to a thesis-level research endeavor.
But it's different with the J6 prosecutions because they're all happening in a single jurisdiction with a lot of people paying attention. Information is surprisingly easy to find. Just googling "january 6th defendants database" will lead to dozens of hits.
Regarding the people held without bail just for wandering in, I did a quick google search but couldn't come up with an updated number of how many defendants are still held in jail (either with no bail or with unrealistic bail). There was a DC Appeals Court decision a while back that instructed magistrates to release people unless the government can demonstrate a specific threat. This means that anyone who is "held without bail for wandering in" would be contrary to that court's order. It's possible I missed something, but I couldn't find any evidence of this happening [EDIT: see notes below].
For the claim that "many" of the J6 defendants were facing "harsh punishments" (in fairness, this is ambiguous) for doing no worse than just trespassing, this too was easy to quickly google. This database from Politico is out of date but was at least searchable. Most of what I was familiar with for misdemeanor J6 pleas was just probation with no jail time. I plugged in "entering a restricted building" in the full table and sorted by incarceration and saw only three people got jail time (reminder that the database is incomplete) with the highest being 50 days for William Tryon. I quickly googled and easily found the guilty statement that was filed in his case. I would guess that the aggravating factors that made his case stand out was that he asked police to enter the building, was denied, tried to enter anyway, was pepper-sprayed, created an opening at another location by removing broken glass, encouraged other people to enter the building, and then confronted another line of police. He couldn't have claimed a plausible defense of "I didn't know I couldn't enter" based on those facts. Given what I know about misdemeanor sentencing, 50 days of jail for this fact pattern did not strike me as out of the norm. Maybe The_Nybbler knows about "many" other cases that I somehow missed, or perhaps they have a specific definition of "harsh punishments" which would encompass probation.
I responded to both with my concerns but neither replied. Maybe either/both have some evidence to showcase, in which case they now have another opportunity to do so (yay!). I think this is an illuminating exercise because it can shed light on our biases and how we can process information. In my last whinge on this topic, I had an enlightening exchange with adamsb6, where they initially suspected that J6 defendants were treated especially harshly. I asked some basic Bayesian questions (how many J6 defendants? what % of those were released? what % of all federal defendants are released?) and they were surprised at how off-base some of their assumptions were. This does not mean that J6 defendants are not treated especially harshly, but the exchange was instructive because it plainly demonstrated how even a conclusion arrived at in earnest can be muddied up if you are led by inaccurate premises.
I hope we can have a similarly enlightening exchange with the above examples. It's possible that both @anti_dan and @The_Nybbler 's claims are true, in which case I remain eager to see their evidence. If neither claim is true, then I would be very curious to know how they arrived at these conclusions. I anticipate that the likely issue is feeding inaccurate premises into the system, which can befall anyone and is not a personal failing. You don't always know what you don't know after all. In either case, I hope I've shed light on just how easy quickly googling shit can be (I swear I am not sponsored by the search engine company).
Edit1: @DradisPing helpfully pointed me to the case of Timothy Louis Hale-Cusanelli. As further explained in my post below, I think this is someone @anti_dan can plausibly argue was "held without bail for wandering in", but not "without them even proving that you knew it was illegal to be there".
Edit2: @JarJarJedi had a solid response and pointed out Karl Dresch and Michael Curzio to which I responded to below. Both were indeed "held without bail for wandering", although arguably they knew it was illegal to be there.
There's a website dedicated to collecting info, https://americangulag.org/
This is a good resource that is easy to navigate and with plenty of links, but I'd just be cautious about accepting their summaries at face-value. Their page on Timothy Louis Hale-Cusanelli simply says "The government indicates Hale shares his political viewpoints on YouTube." which is a surprisingly terse way to describe someone whose schtick was to dress up as Hitler and make videos about how we should finish the job he started.
You're pounding on the table here, counselor. Dressing up as Hitler is protected expressive activity under the First Amendment, not a valid reason to hold someone without bail.
I agree! You appear to be refuting a position you seem to have made up. I said exactly this already:
The only reason I brought up Hale's facial hair preference was a comment on American Gulag's summary. The site didn't have to say anything at all about Hale's YouTube channel. The fact that they tried to describe his Hitler cosplay and "The Jews" rants as just a guy "sharing his political viewpoints on YouTube" makes me think they're intentionally trying to obfuscate and mislead people.
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That guy looks like a vile racist, a Nazi and a scumbag. But as the current government sees pretty much everybody to the right of Joe Biden as a vile racist, a Nazi and a scumbag - and certainly people who are not bound by the confines of what you can and can not say in official position are making it very clear that that's exactly what they think (not that the President himself feels inhibited from calling his opponents semi-fasicsts either - but at least he stops halfway there, right?). So if we say "it's OK to hold people in jail, in solitary confinement, for half a year pre-trial for something like walking around in a wrong place and arguing with a cop - but only if they are Nazi scumbags", then this would apply to many more people than those who supported it originally thought.
I already said that Hale's political opinions should have absolutely no bearing on how he's treated by the legal system. Please notice that what you're responding to was only addressing American Gulag's needlessly obfuscating summary of Hale's YouTube channel.
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