Prosecutors Admit to Violating Jan. 6 Defendant’s Rights; Judge Blocks Guilty Plea

Law enforcement officers and members of the National Guard stand outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Prosecutors on March 14 admitted to violating the rights of a Jan. 6 defendant by keeping him in jail without filing charges within the timeframe required by federal law.

The defendant at a hearing later Monday attempted to plead guilty, but was turned down by the judge in a move that raised questions about the judge’s grasp of the law.

U.S. prosecutors said in a motion filed in the case against Lucas Denney that the government violated a law called the Speedy Trial Act “by failing to file an indictment or information within the time frame” set forth by a federal law, 18 U.S.C. § 3161.

Denney has been held since Dec. 13, 2021, on belief he committed crimes at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

U.S. law requires charges to be filed within 30 days of arrest.

Eighty-five days elapsed before a federal grand jury indicted Denney for allegedly assaulting an officer at the Capitol.

The indictment came after the defendant’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the case and for Denney’s immediate release in custody, noting the violation of federal law.

“Each day Mr. Denney remains in custodial detention is an additional day that his liberty rights are denied without due process in violation his rights under The Fifth Amendment,” they wrote. “Mr. Denney should not be made sit in a jail cell even a single day longer while the Government tries to explain away its failure to comply with the law.”

U.S. prosecutors agreed, but asked that the court dismiss the case “with prejudice,” which would enable fresh charges to be filed against Denney in the future.

In their motion, prosecutors said the violation was unintentional because government lawyers “mistakenly believed” that the 30-day time frame stipulated by law wouldn’t start until Denney first appeared in court in Washington.

“To be sure, the government failed to comply with the Speedy Trial Act in this case. But there is no evidence of bad faith, a pattern of neglect, or something more than an isolated incident that resulted from a number of unfortunate factors,” they said.

During a hearing hours later, Denney’s lawyer, William Shipley, said his client wanted to plead guilty to the single count instead of having it dismissed.

One reason, Shipley said, was to preclude prosecutors from going back to the grand jury to get new charges filed, Politico reported.

U.S. District Judge Randy Moss, an Obama appointee, was caught off guard and expressed concern about Denney’s rights.

“Your client could end up with a very lengthy sentence in a sort of rush to cut the government off,” Moss said.

Moss ended up refusing to accept the guilty plea and scheduled an arraignment/plea hearing for Thursday.

According to lawyer Leslie McAdoo Gordon, Moss’s move “was totally unwarranted and contrary to the rules of the court.” She said that a guilty or not guilty plea must be entered during an arraignment.

“Denney was entitled to enter a guilty plea at his arraignment under the rules, and the fact that he wanted to do so was not a basis for the judge to stop the arraignment proceedings. The delay could have ended up prejudicing Denney’s rights if he had lost the opportunity to plead to the existing one-count indictment,” Gordon wrote in an article published by RedState.

Shipley told The Epoch Times via email: “Because the case remains pending, and the issue of his arraignment and plea is not yet resolved, my only comment is that Mr. Denney appreciates the concession by the government that they violated his right to have a timely indictment, and that he has the right to plead guilty to the pending indictment that they belatedly obtained. The defense will trust the good judgment of Judge Moss at sentencing to resolve the issues in dispute.”