A federal judge has ordered the early release from prison of a Georgia attorney convicted of a felony during the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot.
William McCall Calhoun, an attorney in Americus, was sentenced in August to 18 months in prison following his conviction on felony obstruction of an official proceeding and four misdemeanors related to his role in the riot. But last week the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 opinion that cut across ideological lines, ruled that the U.S. Department of Justice erred in applying the obstruction charge to Capitol rioters.
Late Monday, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich ordered Calhoun ”be released forthwith pending appeal” of his conviction. Federal prosecutors did not object to the release, which comes about six weeks ahead of the scheduled end of his sentence on Aug. 7 from a Georgia halfway house.
“Given the limited time left to be served, the government takes no position on the question whether release pending appeal is likely to pose a danger to the community,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Martin wrote in a response to the court.
Calhoun, 61, was one of Georgia’s highest profile defendants in the long-running Jan. 6 investigation, in part because of his violent online rhetoric before the riot but largely because he was a practicing criminal defense attorney. Following his conviction, the Supreme Court of Georgia suspended Calhoun’s law license pending the outcome of his appeal.
Like with other Jan. 6 defendants, Calhoun’s appeal has been stalled while lower courts waited on last week’s ruling, which dealt specifically with the case brought by former Pennsylvania police officer Joseph Fischer, who claimed he was improperly charged with obstructing an official proceeding.
The federal law was passed in 2002 in the wake of the Enron accounting scandal. It made it a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison to obstruct a federal proceeding by destroying documents or other evidence or “otherwise obstructs, influences or impedes any official proceeding.”
Prosecutors latched on to the second part of the statute and applied it to rioters who, they said, obstructed Congress in certifying the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. But Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, wrote that prosecutors misread the law and remanded the case back to the D.C. Circuit Court for reconsideration “in light of our interpretation.”
The opinion potentially affects the convictions of about 300 Jan. 6 defendants, although the Justice Department noted that only 52 defendants were convicted solely on that charge and no other felony. One of those is Calhoun.
Jessica Sherman Stoltz, Calhoun’s attorney, said her client is pleased with the Supreme Court decision and is looking ahead to next steps.
“He knows this isn’t the end. He knows we still have additional litigation,” she said.
In her brief to the court, Martin said the government does not concede that Calhoun’s obstruction charge is automatically overturned by the Fischer opinion.
“The Supreme Court remanded the case to the court of appeals for further proceedings,” Martin wrote. “Through those further proceedings, the appeals court will interpret the scope of the statute further, which may or may not include circumstances of this case, where the defendant intended to stop the certification and interfere with the voting and balloting underlying the certification.”
Calhoun was among the first rioters to enter the Capitol. Once inside, he joined the mob as it progressed as far as the hallway outside the office of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Before going to the Capitol, Calhoun spent weeks posting vicious, violent and obscene rants on social media directed at incoming President Joe Biden and Democrats in general.
“We have a communist revolution happening before our very eyes to steal this election,” he wrote in a social media post a day after the presidential election. “Americans get ready to rise up and kill the Democratic communists before they do it to us.”
In his trial, prosecutors presented the social media posts as evidence that Calhoun entered the Capitol to stop the certification.
In the years since the riot, Calhoun’s circumstances have changed. He got married and moved with his new wife to Alabama before sentencing. He closed his Georgia law office after his license was suspended. Sherman-Stoltz said he is looking forward to having the felony removed from his record “so he can have his bar license reinstated and move on from this situation.”
Other Georgia defendants charged with obstruction of an official proceeding also are seeking to have their records cleared.
Bruno Cua of Milton was sentenced to a year and a day in prison after being convicted on charges of obstruction and assaulting a police officer. Cua completed his sentence in May but has appealed both convictions. After the Supreme Court ruling, Cua’s attorney asked the appeals court to set a briefing schedule for later this year.
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