A Public Defender’s Radical Method to Representing the January sixth Rioters

“You’ll be able to see the Capitol from right here,” Heather Shaner, a criminal-defense lawyer, says as she walks together with her consumer Jack Griffith, a.ok.a. Juan Bibiano, a.ok.a. Liberty Dragon, to his sentencing listening to on the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse, in Washington, D.C. “It’s lovely, proper?”

“It’s lovely,” Griffith replies, as they pause to take a look at the vista, down one in all D.C.’s extensive streets. His hair is styled in a double-braided mohawk, half purple and half blue. “Not attempting to be humorous, nevertheless it’s lovely inside, too.”

Griffith had shaped that opinion when he entered the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He was a part of a mob that attacked the complicated, after a rally at which Donald Trump claimed that the Presidential election was being stolen from him, in an effort to cease a joint session of Congress from tallying the Electoral School votes. Griffith had pushed there from Tennessee. Footage from D.C. that day exhibits him sporting a MAGA hat and recording video selfies by which he chatters giddily about taking down the New World Order; on the time, he was twenty-five, and never even registered to vote. Shaner, who was assigned to defend him, after he was indicted on 4 federal fees, as a result of he couldn’t afford a lawyer, calls Griffith “a singular particular person.” However one of many themes of “Public Defender,” a movie about Shaner and the authorized aftermath of January sixth, is that she sees all her purchasers that means, or tries to. The movie was written and directed by Andrea Kalin, and produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Middle.

Kalin had been acquainted with Shaner for years, and, understanding that she was politically on the left—there’s a light decal from the Southern Poverty Legislation Middle on the entrance window of Shaner’s home, which can also be her workplace—realized that there is perhaps a narrative to inform about her illustration of January sixth defendants. Some extent of connection that Shaner has with Griffith, who’s one in all two purchasers featured within the movie, is that she, too, has a streak of blue in her hair. She began dyeing it that coloration, for enjoyable, when she turned seventy, seven years in the past. On the best way to court docket, Griffith provides to hold her purple-sequinned backpack. Footage from the Capitol exhibits him contained in the constructing for lower than fifteen minutes. In her sentencing plea, Shaner portrayed him as an impulsive younger man whose social-media behavior made him prone to misinformation. He additionally created a online game by which Trump is the superhero.

Shaner has represented forty-two January sixth defendants to date. That appears like quite a bit, however the Division of Justice has introduced near fifteen hundred such circumstances. Greater than 300 are nonetheless pending—together with, after all, the case introduced by Jack Smith, the particular counsel, in opposition to Donald Trump, a.ok.a. the previous President, a.ok.a. the Republican nominee on this yr’s election. Between Trump and Griffith are figures who have been ringleaders or have been instrumental within the violence, notably members of the Proud Boys. Shaner helped him to achieve a plea deal on a single misdemeanor cost of parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol constructing. Trump, who nonetheless faces 4 felony counts, has been working together with his personal legal professionals, with a lift from a pair of Supreme Courtroom rulings.

The primary of these selections, Trump v. United States, offers ex-Presidents broad immunity from legal prosecution for his or her official acts, and thus isn’t a lot use to anybody who has by no means been President. Nonetheless, in the second, Fischer v. United States, the Courtroom discovered that prosecutors had overreached in how they deployed one statute—obstruction of an official continuing—which was used in opposition to a whole bunch of defendants, together with Trump. (Griffith wasn’t indicted on that cost.) A few of these circumstances have already been resolved in some way, however others might have to be adjusted in mild of Fischer. That end result is a reminder that the authorized response to January sixth was in some methods an train in improvisation within the aftermath of an unprecedented occasion—what amounted to an tried coup. Calibrating the response, and ensuring, amongst different issues, that the suitable precedents are set, is a challenge by which protection legal professionals like Shaner play a mandatory and essential function.

As vital because the assault on the Capitol was for the nation as an entire, it was additionally a deeply felt native occasion for individuals, together with Shaner, who reside in Washington. And it was a heavy load for town’s criminal-justice equipment. “You’re speaking about fifteen hundred circumstances coming into one courthouse,” Shaner instructed me. She had lengthy been one of many non-public legal professionals whom the Workplace of the Federal Public Defender relied on to defend indigent purchasers. When she received the decision after January sixth, although, she insisted on one situation: she wouldn’t signify anybody accused of assaulting a police officer. The issue wasn’t actually the character or the severity of the crime; she’s been a protection lawyer for greater than 4 a long time, and has handled some tough characters. What stopped her, she mentioned, was that she “knew a few of the police personally.” In spite of everything, typically sufficient, over time, in circumstances massive and small, that they had testified in opposition to her purchasers. They have been part of her life. ♦