Imagine trying to martyr someone climbing through a broken window to threaten Congress while being warned by the Capitol Police that they will shoot them for doing it.
Regardless of whether some Congress critters deserve to be threatened, it's just the most privileged idiocy at best, especially to do it because the election didn't go the way you wanted.
Being there was perfectly legal. Attending a riot can be a lot of fun. In fact, if everyone is well behaved, it's encouraged and called peaceful protest.
Everyone that entered did so illegally. The ones that stayed outside were perfectly legal, and are not part of the group that is still wanted by law enforcement.
The majority of them were given charges of breaking and entering into a capitol building or picketing in a capitol building. Not really sure what the graphic is trying to convey. It makes it seem like the majority plead guilty to inssurrection.
Formally speaking, a conviction will attach once a defendant is found guilty by a trial court. Even while one or more appeals may be ongoing, it is accurate to describe the defendant as convicted. The status of a federal conviction sticks until such time the conviction is judicially overturned by a successful appeal, or when pardoned by the executive. But not clemency, which is a reduction in the penalty by the executive, but retains the conviction.
A person who has their conviction overturned or pardoned can no longer be accurately described as convicted. Although colloquially, it's unclear if "ex-convict" is an acceptable description or not.
I would say that one shouldn't use "ex-convict" if the conviction was overturned, since that's essentially saying the conviction was incorrect to begin with (as far as I understand), while it could be correct for someone who was pardoned, since it isn't directly about the conviction being wrong in that case (unless I've misunderstood that).
I'd expect more acquittals tbh. It was, at the outset, a legal and constitutionally protected protest. I'm still not entirely on board with calling it an insurrection, a coup, etc. but it definitely devolved into a non-peaceful event, and I'm pretty ambivalent when it comes to the prosecutions due to that. They fucked around, they should find out. You don't wander off with the speaker of the house's podium and not have the full focus of government come down on your ass.
I would 100% expect acquittals for anyone who stayed outside though, as a hypothetical condition that might warrant acquittal... That for me would be a solid indicator that their intent was limited to peaceful protest. Could very well be that there were only two people who did so.
I'd also like to read an article on the acquittals, but I find their presence to be encouraging, and I'm assuming you don't feel that way.
On the left side of the fence though, the presence of acquittals, even so few, lends a great deal of credibility to the cases... Does it not? Wasn't a kangaroo court if it wasn't 100%, right? I think so anyway :)
Compared to the total number of federal defendants (using 2022 data), there appears to have been a slightly higher rate here of going to trial than defendants overall. Both sets demonstrate that when federal prosecutors bring cases, they don't tend to miss. Also demonstrated is how federal trials rarely result in an acquittal.
Does this mean judges and juries are biased against federal defendants? Likely not, since again: federal prosecutors tend to only pursue a case they know they can win. Knowing this, it must be a tough job for federal public defence lawyers but someone has to do it.
In the Pew Research article? I arrived at a trial acquittal rate of about 17%.
In fiscal year 2022, only 290 of 71,954 defendants in federal criminal cases – about 0.4% – went to trial and were acquitted, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the latest available statistics from the federal judiciary. Another 1,379 went to trial and were found guilty (1.9%).
While that's still about 1 chance in 5, that's still some really bad odds when it comes to the matter of possibly being imprisoned. I imagine most Americans think they'd have better odds than that, but the data shows otherwise, to a scary degree.
the distinction is between those who worked out a plea bargain (plead guilty) and those who were found guilty by a jury at trial (plead not guilty and were then convicted). both are, technically, convictions, but the difference is between those who owned up to their crimes (and saved the courts and the taxpayers the trouble and expense of a trial) and those who tried to get away with it.
The latter group of defendants -- the ones convicted by a jury -- also receive heavier sentences, since the federal sentencing guidelines recommend that defendants pleading guilty before trial get a reduced severity score, potentially shaving months off the sentence, or omitting the custodial sentence entirely, replaced by probation.
Conservative activist group Judicial Watch said in a Friday press release its lawyers are representing Aaron Babbitt in the lawsuit. Babbitt is seeking $30 million.
...
But Babbitt said in the lawsuit his wife was ambushed when she was shot and multiple people yelled, "You just murdered her."
Jesus christ these people are fucking morons. "ambushed"? An officer yelling at you with a gun pointed at you is "ambushed"? Who gives a fuck what people yelled.
I don't see any orange dots. Where are the orange dots? We know there should be orange dots there. Not in the acquitted pile either. Where are the orange dots?
Where are the red dots? I don't see any red dots there. There were a lot of red dots involved with this. They still are.