Exculpatory Evidence

[mspart]

None of you have addressed my point.   He plead guilty.  This is without a doubt true.   But he did so based on what the prosecution showed him and his lawyer, not on what they didn't show.  If he had seen the video, would he have plead differently at that time?  Maybe, maybe not.   Having all of that evidence definitely plays on how the defense will plead. 

https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/defendants/chansley-jacob-anthony

Please note that I added the red box to direct your attention to his original plea.   Now you have to ask yourself, why he would plead guilty after having first plead not guilty.   It was because of the case the prosecution had showed them.   But they did not show them this video which could have undermined the prosecution's overall effort to cast him as an extremely dangerous fellow. 

So yes, he did plead guilty.   But did he know what the prosecution knew?    No he didn't.  And that is what this particular argument is about.   Pleading guilty makes going back much more difficult.   But federal prosecutorial malfeasance should be pursued in my opinion.  

 

[El Luchador]

Just now, VakAttack said:

You just saying "the truth" without any evidence while also lecturing me on how things work in the FIELD THAT I WORK EVERY DAY is truly, truly incredible.

Extracting information isn't your strong point.

[mspart]

6 minutes ago, VakAttack said:

My side?  Dude, I'm a defense attorney.  WTF are you even talking about?  I would be REPRESENTING Chansley in this scenario.

This is interesting.   How would you have represented Chansley?   Would you have told him to plead guilty or would you have fought it and why?

mspart

[VakAttack]

2 minutes ago, mspart said:

None of you have addressed my point.   He plead guilty.  This is without a doubt true.   But he did so based on what the prosecution showed him and his lawyer, not on what they didn't show.  If he had seen the video, would he have plead differently at that time?  Maybe, maybe not.   Having all of that evidence definitely plays on how the defense will plead. 

https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/defendants/chansley-jacob-anthony

Please note that I added the red box to direct your attention to his original plea.   Now you have to ask yourself, why he would plead guilty after having first plead not guilty.   It was because of the case the prosecution had showed them.   But they did not show them this video which could have undermined the prosecution's overall effort to cast him as an extremely dangerous fellow. 

So yes, he did plead guilty.   But did he know what the prosecution knew?    No he didn't.  And that is what this particular argument is about.   Pleading guilty makes going back much more difficult.   But federal prosecutorial malfeasance should be pursued in my opinion.  

 

You have to enter a plea at arraignment of charges, and 99.999% of criminal defendants plead not guilty to allow their lawyers time to examine their case and do investigations.  Most of the time the plea is filed in writing (at the state court level) by the defense attorney without the defendant doing or saying anything on the record.  Pleading not guilty at arraignment is perfunctory.

[El Luchador]

6 minutes ago, mspart said:

None of you have addressed my point.   He plead guilty.  This is without a doubt true.   But he did so based on what the prosecution showed him and his lawyer, not on what they didn't show.  If he had seen the video, would he have plead differently at that time?  Maybe, maybe not.   Having all of that evidence definitely plays on how the defense will plead. 

https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/defendants/chansley-jacob-anthony

Please note that I added the red box to direct your attention to his original plea.   Now you have to ask yourself, why he would plead guilty after having first plead not guilty.   It was because of the case the prosecution had showed them.   But they did not show them this video which could have undermined the prosecution's overall effort to cast him as an extremely dangerous fellow. 

So yes, he did plead guilty.   But did he know what the prosecution knew?    No he didn't.  And that is what this particular argument is about.   Pleading guilty makes going back much more difficult.   But federal prosecutorial malfeasance should be pursued in my opinion.  

 

One of the statements made here was that he entered through a door that was knocked in, the video evidence shows him entering and his interactions with the capitol police at that entrance.  It paints a very different image.  The prosecution also stated he had to be removed physically,  the video evidence shows a different story. 

Edited March 31, 2023 by El Luchador

[VakAttack]

1 minute ago, mspart said:

This is interesting.   How would you have represented Chansley?   Would you have told him to plead guilty or would you have fought it and why?

mspart

Since this is a professional inquiry, I would need much more information on the case before being able to answer that.  There are intricacies.  The truth is that the judicial system itself is formatted in such a way that almost everybody pleads guilty eventually, especially at the federal level.  Trials at the state level are somewhat rare, but not super rare.  I've done 40 or so.  At the federal level, they are much more rare because of the discovery rules being more favorable to the prosecutors and the sentencing being extremely harsh in general, plus prosecutor's offices have a lot more resources than individual defense attorneys for investigative purposes.  Many cases that I would love to go to trial don't end up there because defendant's are scared of possible trial outcomes and sentencing from judge's being more harsh.

 

The Federal system, in particular, is tough because there are no fully formed plea agreements.  For example, in state cases, if I have a plea agreement worked out w/ a prosecutor and my client, everybody knows exactly what the sentence will be.  In the Federal system, there is no full agreement so much as prosecutors agreeing to make a recommendation, or removing certain things from the sentencing guidelines in terms of the enhancements (basically a table is created where defendants get points added (which is bad) or removed (obviously good) to go into a final score that is converted to a recommended sentencing range.  Then the judge gets to enter a sentence, and the guidelines are not particularly binding on the judges anyway, they can go above or below them depending on their feelings about the case.

[mspart]

21 minutes ago, VakAttack said:

Since this is a professional inquiry, I would need much more information on the case before being able to answer that.  There are intricacies. 

I agree with this.    I appreciate your well reasoned writeup based on our not quite adversarial tones in this conversation.   That is very much appreciated. 

You do mention that there are intricacies.   Without a doubt.  One of those intricacies is knowing what the prosecution knows.   

I grant that this is made more difficult by the fact that he plead guilty.   But if he hadn't and you tried the case without knowledge of this video, and he was found guilty, and now the video comes out, how would you react on behalf of your client?

mspart 

[Plasmodium]

They caught him red handed.  From multiple angles.   This case is open and shut.  There is video of him actually committing the crime for which he plead guilty.  It is immaterial what happened afterwards.

[VakAttack]

6 minutes ago, mspart said:

I agree with this.    I appreciate your well reasoned writeup based on our not quite adversarial tones in this conversation.   That is very much appreciated. 

You do mention that there are intricacies.   Without a doubt.  One of those intricacies is knowing what the prosecution knows.   

I grant that this is made more difficult by the fact that he plead guilty.   But if he hadn't and you tried the case without knowledge of this video, and he was found guilty, and now the video comes out, how would you react on behalf of your client?

mspart 

https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/case-multi-defendant/file/1430996/download

Based on the charge he entered a plea to, Obstruction of an Official Proceeding, I would probably recommend a plea, if he asked my opinion.  There is no doubt Congress was in session and in an official proceeding, and that the entry onto Capital grounds was designed to impede that proceeding.  Plus he gave media interviews where he proclaimed it  win that Congress was force to retreat and hide. Those are uncontroverted facts as near as i can tell.  Most of the other stuff  is window dressing and/or mitigating/aggravating factors.  The actual charge, though, is pretty clear cut violation by him, and his own statements display intent and lack of remorse.

[El Luchador]

16 minutes ago, Plasmodium said:

They caught him red handed.  From multiple angles.   This case is open and shut.  There is video of him actually committing the crime for which he plead guilty.  It is immaterial what happened afterwards.

“Had the videos been properly disclosed as required by law they would certainly have been used as a counterpoint to the one-sided and factually inaccurate portrait of Mr. Chansley painted by the Government in its Sentencing Statement and arguments at the sentencing hearing,” the letter continues. 

 

His lawyer disagrees

[El Luchador]

13 minutes ago, VakAttack said:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/case-multi-defendant/file/1430996/download

Based on the charge he entered a plea to, Obstruction of an Official Proceeding, I would probably recommend a plea, if he asked my opinion.  There is no doubt Congress was in session and in an official proceeding, and that the entry onto Capital grounds was designed to impede that proceeding.  Plus he gave media interviews where he proclaimed it  win that Congress was force to retreat and hide. Those are uncontroverted facts as near as i can tell.  Most of the other stuff  is window dressing and/or mitigating/aggravating factors.  The actual charge, though, is pretty clear cut violation by him, and his own statements display intent and lack of remorse.

Does it bother you that protesters have stormed congress on multiple occasions in protest without similar punishment?  Do you think this was in no way political, or mostly political. Do you believe justice in its current state is being equally distributed? If you were denied video evidence showing your clients actions in full, would you feel as if your clients rights were violated.  Do you think the video evidence would have had value in the counsel you gave your client?

[mspart]

Based on what Vak has just said, he plead guilty to, Obstruction of an Official Proceeding.   I agree that is pretty cut and dried.   Official Proceedings were being held, they were obstructed, and he was on the premises.  If that is all he plead guilty to, I will bow out of this argument.   Tough to fight that I think.    Video does not show he was not there, and the time of the video is the same time that the proceedings were obstructed.  If that is the only count he plead guilty to, I don't think there is much else to talk about.   If there were other charges he plead guilty to that would have been affected by the video, that is a different story.  

I just looked it up on https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/defendants/chansley-jacob-anthony

It was a plea agreement.  He plead to this and all other charges were dropped.   The charge of obstruction carries a penalty of a max of 20 years, $250k fine.   Interesting that his sentence was only 41 months in light of this and was charged only $2k in fines.     Here are the sentencing guidelines provided due to the plea bargain found in the Plea Bargain pdf on that website:

So pleading guilty he was facing 25 years.  

But wait, there's more.    In the  plea bargain it states this:

And regarding the fine, the was also in the plea agreement. 

Facing those jail sentences and fines and having them reduced to what they were in the plea agreement, I might have been tempted to take that deal too.   I haven't looked at the other charges but he probably would have had this one pinned on him anyway and his outcome much worse.   I had no idea this information was available on the web until now. 

I still feel that not providing the video was prosecutorial malfeasance.   He made a decision based on incomplete information.  But again, based on the circumstances, I think he did pretty good.  

Vak - Thanks for hanging in there and providing reasonable responses to my questions.   I very much appreciate it. 

mspart

 

[Plasmodium]

1 hour ago, El Luchador said:

“Had the videos been properly disclosed as required by law they would certainly have been used as a counterpoint to the one-sided and factually inaccurate portrait of Mr. Chansley painted by the Government in its Sentencing Statement and arguments at the sentencing hearing,” the letter continues. 

 

His lawyer disagrees

Also laughable here is that all of the meta info stamped on the CCTV video produced by Tucker and other biased folks is cropped out. It is transparently propaganda, but people simply don't care about truth.  Only narrative.

[El Luchador]

3 minutes ago, Plasmodium said:

Also laughable here is that all of the meta info stamped on the CCTV video produced by Tucker and other biased folks is cropped out. It is transparently propaganda, but people simply don't care about truth.  Only narrative.

Are you saying that nothing is  of value without viewing all 41,000 hours. His interactions and conduct don't have any value without seeing it in its entirety?  I maintain the video of him entering the capital speaks volumes about the tone the government tried to set with respect to the entire day. You are essentially taking the position that the description of the event has more value than the video documenting the event.  The prosecution made statements that require only short clips to prove wrong. They framed the demeanor of  defendant and the action of the police in ways easily disproven by the video evidence. 

[Paul158]

Well gentleman this was a very informative discussion. Thank you. I now know who  to hire or ask questions if ever get in trouble.

[Plasmodium]

15 hours ago, El Luchador said:

Are you saying that nothing is  of value without viewing all 41,000 hours. His interactions and conduct don't have any value without seeing it in its entirety?  I maintain the video of him entering the capital speaks volumes about the tone the government tried to set with respect to the entire day. You are essentially taking the position that the description of the event has more value than the video documenting the event.  The prosecution made statements that require only short clips to prove wrong. They framed the demeanor of  defendant and the action of the police in ways easily disproven by the video evidence. 

Do you understand what the event was?  Do you understand the evidence against him with respect to that?

Edited April 1, 2023 by Plasmodium