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An update, largely for the sake of visibility, about my post below on January 6th defendants.
I received a number of very helpful responses pointing out some things I missed. I was wrong when I said @anti_dan 's claim about J6 defendants "held without bail for wandering in" was fictitious. At least three different people reasonably fit this qualification: Timothy Louis Hale-Cusanelli, Karl Dresch, Michael Curzio, and possibly others. All three had their bail denied, meaning they were going to remain behind bars no matter what, and no amount of money would get them released ahead of trial. Dresch and Curzio ended up getting released about 6 months later after pleading guilty to misdemeanors. Hale was convicted at trial and was sentenced to 48 months of prison.
The reasons why their pretrial release was unconditionally denied are not that surprising, especially in light of how unforgiving US legal standards are in this area. Hale was frantically trying to destroy evidence by deleting his accounts and disposing of clothing & javelin flag pole. His coworkers at the naval weapons base he had a security clearance for thought he was crazy because he'd regularly show up to work with a Hitler mustache and make holocaust jokes. Curzio spent 8 years in prison for attempted 1st degree murder conviction, and within two years of his release he perhaps demonstrated some poor judgment by traveling from Florida to be on the frontlines of the J6 riot. Dresch is someone whose case I wrote about before within the discussion of pretrial detention. He had bad criminal history (multiple law enforcement obstruction charges, and a number of felonies from when he led cops on a high-speed chase reaching speeds of 145mph) and despite his felony convictions, he was caught with multiple guns after J6.
So going back to @anti_dan 's original claim:
In case you don't know, Debs was a prominent and unusually eloquent socialist (Freddie DeBoer is a big big fan) who was sentenced to ten years for sedition for protesting America's participation in WW1. If you've ever heard the phrase "can't yell fire in a crowded theater", it's because that was used by Oliver Wendell Holmes to justify the imprisonment of another socialist WW1 protestor in Schenck v. United States, and so Debs' SCOTUS appeal was rejected for the same reasons. First Amendment jurisprudence was pathetic back then.
I don't know if anti_dan still holds their belief on comparing some J6 defendants to Debs, but now that we have some identifiable cases of people who were held without bail for wandering in, perhaps this can prompt a more fruitful discussion on the legitimacy of this comparison. Some questions for everyone: Are you surprised by the reasons why these people were denied pretrial release? Is denial of their release indicative of politically-motivated retribution?
I think the norm breaking and hand waving of precedents is very similar in its problematic nature. The issue here isn't that any individual case cannot be justified on some grounds. The issue is that it is being justified for no other reason than the DOJ wanting to justify them. I tried and could not find an equivalent database for the 2018 Capitol riot. As best I could see all but 5 were handled with "‘Post & Forfeit" procedures, with the other 5 being released the next Monday on bail.
I read this multiple times and I don't understand what it means. What norm is being broken? What precedent is being hand waved? When you say that treatment in individual cases are being "justified for no other reason than the DOJ wanting to justify them", what does that mean? Are you saying that DOJ is making up reasons in their sentencing memorandum? Like what?
I'm going to assume that J6 was more-or-less comparable to the 2018 Kavanaugh protest. Almost everyone arrested in 2018 was accused of trespassing/crowding. We already know that 70% of all J6 defendants were also released pretrial, so do you have any evidence to show that those accused of just trespassing/crowding were treated harshly? I highlighted three names that I think plausibly fit your original claim of "held without bail for wandering in", but they seem to be outliers.
Arrest people who are in a political area illegally, release immediately on a tiny bond, don't bother tracking down anyone who "got away", quietly drop charges against everyone who isn't a ringleader down the line (or on video injuring a cop or causing greater than $5-10k in property damage), and sentence the ringleaders to light probation. That is how we mostly treat political protests that get uppity. This is despite the fact that there are plenty of laws that can be used at the discretion of prosecutors to ruin the lives of even entirely peaceful protestors. Basically every BLM protest was unpermitted. EVERYONE who attended could have been arrested, held overnight until whenever a judge "was available". Then you could comb their social media for their most egregious political positions, and you end up with 1/20 or whatever denied bail for being an extremist, if you so desire. But we didn't do that because that is un-American.
I am saying not dropping 90% of the charges is a huge departure from norms.
Given the Kavanaugh protest precedent 70% is a tiny percentage. 100% of those were released pretrial, and only ~2% were in jail for a single night.
So to recap, your original claim posited that we reached Debs level of political persecution, and that original assertion was based on what you believed were instances of people held without bail just for wandering in. It appears that you are now shifting away from that original position and instead arguing that precedent is broken in part because the ringleaders of January 6th are not offered light probation and because 90% of charges are not being dropped.
Am I incorrect to say that your position has changed? If not, could you explain the thought-process that led you to this change?
Your problem is I was using one egregious case to illustrate the entire pattern of un-American behavior. Both things happened in J6, and both are very bad. There is both the non-central, but egregious case, and the central pattern of over-prosecution.
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