On Oct. 22, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the 2022 misdemeanor trespassing conviction of Couy Griffin, a New Mexico county commissioner who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Griffin was found guilty, after bench trial, of “entering and remaining in a restricted zone” under 18 U.S.C. Section 1752.
The issue, over which federal district judges in Washington, D.C. were roughly split, was whether, in such cases, the government need only prove that the defendant knowingly entered into an area that is “posted, cordoned off, or otherwise restricted,” or whether it must also prove that the defendant knew that “the President or other person protected by the Secret Service”—in this instance Vice President Mike Pence—“is or will be temporarily visiting.”
The majority opinion of the court, filed by Circuit Judge Nina Pillard and joined by Senior Circuit Judge Judith Rogers, concluded that the government need only prove the former and that the latter requirement in the statute “merely confirms that such trespasses are within Congress’s legislative authority.”…