Pa. defendant in Jan. 6 Capitol riot says any mention of ‘attack on Congress’ wouldn’t be fair in trial
Deborah Lynn Lee wants a judge to dismiss the federal charges she faces for the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
John M. Pierce, Lee’s lawyer, argues the written charges are too vague and ambiguous and don’t offer enough proof that she committed a crime.
Pierce’s dismissal motion says prosecutors “failed to ... contain a plain, concise and definite written statement of the essential facts constituting the offense.”
A criminal complaint filed against Lee shows video of her outside Capitol doors. She wore a multicolored jacket and a camouflage-style “beanie” hat,” prosecutors allege.
“I’m live. I’m at the Capitol doors. We’re all the way inside the building. We’re trying to get in. We got the glass broken,” a woman narrator of a video posted on her Facebook account says, according to the complaint.
Other video shows Lee, 55, of Olyphant, Lackawanna County, inside. In private messages to other Facebook users, Lee said, “I broke into congress and there were guns on us” and “It’s our house. Our capital. We had every right to occupy.”
Lee is charged with entering and remaining in a restricted building; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building; violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds; and parading, demonstrating or picketing in the Capitol.
She rejected a plea bargain this year and decided to go to trial.
Pierce also wants U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson to bar federal prosecutors from using closed-circuit television
photos at Lee’s trial. Pierce contends FBI investigating agents “cannot possibly testify that the ... photos provide a fair representation of that which they purport to depict, as they [the agents] were not present when the video was taken.”
Video from inside the Capitol shows Lee and others in a “crowd that forcefully pushed back a line of uniformed police officers in the vicinity of the Chamber of the House of Representatives,” according to the complaint.
Pierce also asked the judge to bar prosecutors from using terms such as “terrorist/terrorism,” “insurrection,” “sedition,” “treason,” “attack on the Capitol,” “attack on democracy” and “attack on Congress” during her trial.
Terms like that would “inflame and prejudice the jury,” he contends.
He also wants the trial moved out of Washington “due to the numerous and inflammatory news media reports concerning the defendant and the events of Jan. 6, 2021.”
The district court is so prejudiced against Lee
that she can’t get a fair and impartial trial there, Pierce argues.
“All news sources have given close scrutiny to the defendant’s arrest and to all subsequent events in this case, in an attempt to secure defendant’s conviction,” Pierce wrote. “Such coverages vastly exceeds the privileges of the news media arising from the First Amendment, as is shown by the newspaper articles and radio and television news covering the period since Jan. 6, 2021, daily.”
Federal prosecutors have until July 5 to respond to Pierce’s motions.
Lee was accompanied in the Capitol by Michael Rusyn, an Olyphant volunteer firefighters. Video shows them in the Capitol together.
Rusyn, 36, an Olyphant resident, pleaded guilty in September to parading, demonstrating or picketing in the Capitol. He was sentenced in January to 60 days of home confinement, probation for two years, a $2,000 fine, a $10 special assessment and $500 in restitution toward more than $1.5 million in Capitol damage.