• About
  • Advertise
  • Contact
  • Careers
  • EEO PUBLIC FILE REPORT
  • FCC Public File
  • FCC Applications
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
Saturday, May 21, 2022
WTMJ
  • Home
  • News
    • Local
    • National
    • Coronavirus
    • Featured Stories
    • Decision Wisconsin
    • Guest Editorials
  • Weather
    • Closings and Delays
    • Flight Status
    • Interactive Radar
    • Watches and Warnings
  • Traffic
    • Construction Updates
  • Sports
    • Green Bay Packers
      • Green & Gold Podcast
      • Second Screen
    • Milwaukee Brewers
      • Brewers Extra Innings
      • First Pitch
    • Milwaukee Bucks
      • Bucks Talk
      • Bucks Flagship Podcast
    • NCAA
    • Extra Points
  • Shows
    • Wisconsin’s Morning News
    • Steve Scaffidi
    • Jeff Wagner
    • Wisconsin’s Afternoon News
    • WTMJ Nights
    • Wisconsin’s Weekend Morning News
    • WTMJ Conversations
    • Reporter’s Notebook
    • Featured Shows
      • Accunet Mortgage & Realty Show
      • Drake & Associates Retirement Ready Show
      • Every Day Health
      • Fix It Show
      • Money Talk with Dave Spano
      • Travel Wisconsin
  • Podcasts
    • The Steve Scaffidi Show
    • Jeff Wagner Podcast
    • WTMJ Extra
    • WTMJ Nights
    • Green & Gold Podcast
    • Brewers Extra Innings Podcast
    • First Pitch
    • Bucks Flagship Podcast
  • Features
    • WaterStone Bank – Salute to Service
    • Annex Wealth Management – WEBINAR – Understand Your WRS Pension Potential
    • WTMJ Cares – WI Humane Society
    • Wagner’s Home Improvement Showcase
    • Every Day Health
    • Gene Mueller Come Along Trip to Paris and Normandy
    • Discover Greece and Its Islands with John Mercure and Collette
    • Spotlight on San Antonio Holiday with John Mercure and Collette
  • Contests
LISTEN LIVE
No Result
View All Result
WTMJ
  • Home
  • News
    • Local
    • National
    • Coronavirus
    • Featured Stories
    • Decision Wisconsin
    • Guest Editorials
  • Weather
    • Closings and Delays
    • Flight Status
    • Interactive Radar
    • Watches and Warnings
  • Traffic
    • Construction Updates
  • Sports
    • Green Bay Packers
      • Green & Gold Podcast
      • Second Screen
    • Milwaukee Brewers
      • Brewers Extra Innings
      • First Pitch
    • Milwaukee Bucks
      • Bucks Talk
      • Bucks Flagship Podcast
    • NCAA
    • Extra Points
  • Shows
    • Wisconsin’s Morning News
    • Steve Scaffidi
    • Jeff Wagner
    • Wisconsin’s Afternoon News
    • WTMJ Nights
    • Wisconsin’s Weekend Morning News
    • WTMJ Conversations
    • Reporter’s Notebook
    • Featured Shows
      • Accunet Mortgage & Realty Show
      • Drake & Associates Retirement Ready Show
      • Every Day Health
      • Fix It Show
      • Money Talk with Dave Spano
      • Travel Wisconsin
  • Podcasts
    • The Steve Scaffidi Show
    • Jeff Wagner Podcast
    • WTMJ Extra
    • WTMJ Nights
    • Green & Gold Podcast
    • Brewers Extra Innings Podcast
    • First Pitch
    • Bucks Flagship Podcast
  • Features
    • WaterStone Bank – Salute to Service
    • Annex Wealth Management – WEBINAR – Understand Your WRS Pension Potential
    • WTMJ Cares – WI Humane Society
    • Wagner’s Home Improvement Showcase
    • Every Day Health
    • Gene Mueller Come Along Trip to Paris and Normandy
    • Discover Greece and Its Islands with John Mercure and Collette
    • Spotlight on San Antonio Holiday with John Mercure and Collette
  • Contests
LISTEN LIVE
No Result
View All Result
WTMJ
No Result
View All Result

Jurors reject array of defenses at Capitol riot trials

AP News by AP News
April 25, 2022
in AP National, AP News, National
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterEmail

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN
Associated Press

Jurors have heard — and rejected — an array of excuses and arguments from the first rioters to be tried for storming the U.S. Capitol. The next jury to get a Capitol riot case could hear another novel defense this week at the trial of a retired New York City police officer.

Thomas Webster, a 20-year veteran of the NYPD, has claimed he was acting in self-defense when he tackled a police officer who was trying to protect the Capitol from a mob on Jan. 6, 2021. Webster’s lawyer also has argued that he was exercising his First Amendment free speech rights when he shouted profanities at police that day. Jurors were selected Monday and are expected to hear attorneys’ opening statements Tuesday.

Webster, 56, is the fourth Capitol riot defendant to get a jury trial. Each has presented a distinct line of defense.

An Ohio man who stole a coat rack from a Capitol office testified he was “following presidential orders” from Donald Trump. An off-duty police officer from Virginia claimed he only entered the Capitol to retrieve a fellow officer. A lawyer for a Texas man who confronted Capitol police accused prosecutors of rushing to judgment against somebody prone to exaggerating.

Those defenses didn’t sway the juries at their respective trials. Collectively, a total of 36 jurors unanimously convicted the three rioters of all 17 counts in their indictments.

Webster faces the same fate if a federal judge’s blistering words are any guide. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who will preside over Webster’s trial, has described his videotaped conduct as “among the most indefensible and reprehensible” that the judge has seen among Jan. 6 cases, with “no real defense for it.”

“You were a police officer and you should have known better,” Mehta told Webster during a bond hearing last June, according to a transcript.

But a dozen jurors, not the judge, will decide the case against Webster, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who retired from the NYPD in 2011.

A wealth of video evidence and self-incriminating behavior by riot defendants has given prosecutors the upper hand in many cases. Mary McCord, a Georgetown University Law Center professor and former Justice Department official, said jurors often won’t have to rely on witness testimony or circumstantial evidence because videos captured much of the violence and destruction on Jan. 6.

“When I was a prosecutor trying cases, I would have loved to have had cases where the entire crime was on video. That just doesn’t happen that often. But for jurors, it can be very powerful,” she said.

Webster’s trial is the sixth overall. In a pair of bench trials, a different federal judge heard testimony without a jury before acquitting one defendant and partially acquitting another.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump nominee who acquitted Matthew Martin of all charges, said it was reasonable for the New Mexico man to believe that police allowed him to enter the Capitol. In the first bench trial, McFadden convicted New Mexico elected official Couy Griffin of illegally entering restricted Capitol grounds but acquitted him of engaging in disorderly conduct.

Stephen Saltzburg, a George Washington Law School professor and former Justice Department official, said it may be difficult for prosecutors to secure convictions against defendants who merely entered the Capitol and didn’t exhibit any violent or destructive behavior.

“I think the people with the best chances are those who say, ‘I was just there and I got swept up with everybody else.’ The government is going to have to have some way to show there’s more than that or the government will lose,” Saltzburg said.

Webster brought a gun and a Marine Corps flag attached to a metal pole when he traveled alone to Washington from his home in Florida, New York, a village approximately 70 miles northwest of New York City. He wore his NYPD-issued bulletproof vest but says he left the pistol in his hotel room when he headed to the Jan. 6 rally where Trump spoke.

Police body camera video captured Webster’s confrontation outside the Capitol with a line of officers, including one identified only as “Officer N.R.” in court papers.

The unnamed Metropolitan Police Department officer described the encounter in a written statement. The officer said Webster swung the flagpole at him in a downward chopping motion, hitting a metal barricade, then charged at him with clenched fists.

“He pushed me to the ground and attempted to violently tear away my gas mask and ballistic helmet. This caused me to choke and gasp for air before another participant at the riot helped me to my feet,” the officer wrote.

The officer said he retreated behind a police line after Webster pinned him to the ground.

“His actions, attack and targeted assault caused me to fear for my life and could have easily left my wife and two small children without a husband and father,” the officer wrote.

Defense attorney James Monroe has claimed the unnamed officer gestured toward Webster, “inviting him to engage in a fight,” before reaching over a police barrier and punching Webster in his face. Webster “used that amount of force he reasonably believed necessary to protect himself” by tackling the officer to the ground, Monroe said in a court filing.

Mehta, however, said the video doesn’t show Webster getting punched in the face. The judge described Webster as an instigator.

“It was his conduct that sort of broke the dam, at least in that area,” Mehta added.

Webster, now a self-employed landscaper, enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1985, was honorably discharged in 1989 and joined the NYPD in 1991. His department service included a stint on then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s private security detail.

Monroe claimed “Officer N.R.” had reached over a metal barrier and pushed a “peaceful” man who was blinded by pepper spray.

“As a former U.S. Marine and a member of law enforcement, Mr. Webster’s moral instinct was to protect the innocent,” Monroe wrote.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Hava Mirell has argued that Webster should be held to a higher standard given his professional experience.

“If he were there to protect the innocent, then he should have been fending other rioters off from the barricade, not the other way around,” Mirell said at the bond hearing.

Webster faces six counts, including assaulting, resisting or impeding an officer using a dangerous weapon. He’s the first Capitol riot defendant to be tried on an assault charge. He isn’t accused of entering the Capitol.

More than 780 people have been charged with riot-related federal crimes. The Justice Department says over 245 of them have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement. More than 250 riot defendants have pleaded guilty, mostly to nonviolent misdemeanors.

Jurors convicted two rioters of interfering with officers. One of them, Thomas Robertson, was an off-duty police officer from Rocky Mount, Virginia. The other, Texas resident Guy Wesley Reffitt, also was convicted of storming the Capitol with a holstered handgun.

The third Capitol rioter to be convicted by a jury was Dustin Byron Thompson, an Ohio man who said he was following Trump’s orders.

“Even if jurors accepted that (Thompson) felt like he was doing what the former president wanted, that still wouldn’t be a legal excuse,” said McCord, the Georgetown professor. “When juries are able to witness what happened, they can make that assessment relatively easily.”

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Previous Post

Weary of many disasters? UN says worse to come

Next Post

AP Top Business News at 8:11 p.m. EDT

AP News

AP News

Stay Connected

  • 22.3k Followers
  • 1k Follower
  • 590 Subscribers

Most Popular

10 dead in Buffalo supermarket attack police call hate crime

REPORT: Waukesha Christmas Parade attack connection to deadly Buffalo shooting

May 17, 2022
GALLERY: Packers season ends in stunning upset at Lambeau Field

Milwaukee violence continues with two homicides early Sunday morning

May 15, 2022
European Union to tariff Harley-Davidson bikes

Harley Davidson suspends work at Menomonee Falls plant for two weeks

May 19, 2022
17 people shot on Water Street Friday night

Milwaukee Friday night shooting update; at least 21 people injured and ten people in custody

May 14, 2022
3 firefighters, 3 civilians, injured after explosion at marine construction facility in Eagle

3 firefighters, 3 civilians, injured after explosion at marine construction facility in Eagle

May 19, 2022
WTMJ

For more than 90 years, WTMJ-AM has been "Wisconsin's Radio Station".

Follow Us

Home

News

Weather

Traffic

Sports

Shows

Podcasts

Features

Careers

Contests

Recent News

The Fix-It Show 5-14-22 Hour 1 – Accurate Basement Repair

The Fix-It Show – 05/21/2022 – Olson’s Outdoor Power

May 21, 2022

Rare northern Michigan tornado kills 1, injures more than 40

May 21, 2022
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Contact
  • Careers
  • EEO PUBLIC FILE REPORT
  • FCC Public File
  • FCC Applications
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use

© 2022 Good Karma Brands Milwaukee, LLC.

  • LISTEN LIVE
  • Home
  • News
    • News
    • Local News
    • Coronavirus
    • Decision Wisconsin
  • Weather
    • Weather
    • Watches and Warnings
    • Closings and Delays
    • Flight Status
  • Traffic
  • Construction Updates
  • Sports
    • Sports
    • Green Bay Packers
    • Milwaukee Brewers
    • Milwaukee Bucks
  • Shows
    • Shows
    • Wisconsin’s Morning News
    • Steve Scaffidi
    • Jeff Wagner
    • Wisconsin’s Afternoon News
    • WTMJ Nights
    • WTMJ Conversations
    • Featured Shows
  • Podcasts
  • Features
    • Features
    • Good Karma Give Back
    • WTMJ Roundtable
  • Contests
  • Alexa
No Result
View All Result

© 2022 Good Karma Brands Milwaukee, LLC.