Supreme Court decision on January 6 rioters case | CNN Politics

Attorney Jeffrey Green, representing January 6 defendant Joseph Fischer, argues before the US Supreme Court.

January 6 defendants who are still serving prison time or awaiting trial are likely to go back to their judges now that the Supreme Court has ruled on an obstruction charged used in some of the Capitol riot cases.

Several convicted of obstruction previously tried to shorten their prison sentences after the Supreme Court took up the Joseph Fischer case, but only some were successful.

The DC US attorney’s office said Friday that about 249 cases involved the obstruction charge – and in every one of those cases, the defendant faced other charges, including felonies and misdemeanors. About 52 people were convicted and sentenced with the obstruction charge as their only felony. Of those, 27 people are currently incarcerated, according to prosecutors. 

Fischer’s attorney, Jeffrey Green of Green Law Chartered, told CNN that any petition brought by January 6 defendants over the obstruction charge will be “an uphill fight.”

The Justice Department has taken steps for months in its prosecutions of rioters to shore up the obstruction cases against them, in case of a ruling like the Supreme Court’s on Friday.

In nearly all of the trials of January 6 defendants who faced obstruction counts, the Justice Department showed evidence to the juries of the electoral vote boxes being removed from the Senate floor — potentially a prosecutorial move that will provide a protection of some of the prosecutions.

They called as a witness in some trials a lawyer for the Senate who watched over the boxes in the chamber as the rioters breached the building. The boxes were removed from the Senate floor when the chamber recessed.