The Supreme Court said on July 11 that it will formally consider on Sept. 30 whether to hear Jan. 6 defendant Russell Dean Alford’s appeal of a 2022 conviction.
Mr. Alford, of Hokes Bluff, Alabama, argues that he shouldn’t have been convicted of two counts of federal disorderly conduct because he remained passive during the brief time he was inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The Capitol breach prevented Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election for several hours. Two weeks later, President Joe Biden was inaugurated.
More than 1,200 people have been charged at the federal level in connection with their Jan. 6-related activities.
At the judicial conference that will take place behind closed doors 11 weeks from now, the justices are expected to vote in the appeal known as Alford v. United States. At least four of the nine justices must vote to grant Mr. Alford’s petition for certiorari, or review, for it to move forward to the oral argument stage.
The DOJ said he entered the Capitol at 2:43 p.m. through doors that others had broken down, then stayed inside the complex for about 15 minutes. He documented his actions in videos and photographs that he posted on social media.
A federal jury in Washington convicted Mr. Alford on Oct. 5, 2022, on four misdemeanor counts.
Specifically, Mr. Alford was convicted of “entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building,” according to the DOJ.
On Feb. 2, 2023, he was sentenced to 12 months of incarceration followed by 12 months of supervised release.
“Russell Alford entered through an open door, went a short distance inside, stood silently against a wall for about ten minutes, then headed for an exit when police told the crowd to leave,” the petition stated.
While that may have been enough to convict him of trespassing and demonstrating in the Capitol, a lower court found that his “mere presence” was proof he participated in disorderly or disruptive conduct, the document stated.
On Oct. 4, 2022, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected a motion to dismiss the disorderly conduct charges, ruling that Mr. Alford’s “mere presence inside the Capitol disturbed the public peace or undermined public safety.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled on Jan. 5, 2024, that even though Mr. Alford “was neither violent nor destructive” at the Capitol, “a jury could rationally find that his unauthorized presence in the Capitol as part of an unruly mob contributed to the disruption of the Congress’s electoral certification and jeopardized public safety.”
The petition stated that the circuit court’s ruling should be reversed because it “gives police, prosecutors, and courts broad authority to make case-by-case judgments about conduct in settings for political activity, and at the same time leaves citizens in those settings to guess at the types of conduct that are prohibited.”
The circuit court “correctly rejected” Mr. Alford’s argument about evidence, she wrote, as she asked the justices to deny his petition.
Mr. Alford’s attorney, James Tobia Gibson of the Federal Public Defender’s office in Birmingham, Alabama, and the DOJ didn’t respond by publication time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
The Supreme Court is currently in summer recess.
