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Page Number: 21

Cite as:  603 U. S. ____ (2024) 

1 

JACKSON, J., concurring 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

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No. 23–5572 
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JOSEPH W. FISCHER, PETITIONER v. 
UNITED STATES 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF 
APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT 

[June 28, 2024] 

JUSTICE JACKSON, concurring. 
On January 6, 2021, an angry mob stormed the United
States Capitol seeking to prevent Congress from fulfilling 
its  constitutional  duty to  certify  the  electoral  votes  in  the 
2020 Presidential election.  See ante, at 1–2.  The peaceful
transfer  of  power  is  a  fundamental  democratic  norm,  and
those  who  attempted  to  disrupt  it  in  this  way  inflicted  a 
deep wound on this Nation.  But today’s case is not about 
the immorality of those acts.  Instead, the question before
this Court is far narrower: What is the scope of the partic-
ular crime Congress has outlined in 18 U. S. C. §1512(c)(2)? 
In the United States of America, “men are not subjected 
to criminal punishment because their conduct offends our 
patriotic emotions or thwarts a general purpose sought to
be effected by specific commands which they have not diso-
beyed.  Nor are they to be held guilty of offenses which the 
statutes  have  omitted,  though  by  inadvertence,  to  define 
and condemn.”  Viereck v. United States, 318 U. S. 236, 245 
(1943).  Our commitment to equal justice and the rule of law 
requires the courts to faithfully apply criminal laws as writ-
ten, even in periods of national crisis, see, e.g., Cramer v. 
United States, 325 U. S. 1, 46–48 (1945), and even when the 
conduct  alleged  is  indisputably  abhorrent,  cf.  Michaels  v. 
Davis,  601  U. S.  ___,  ___  (2024)  (JACKSON, J.,  dissenting 
from denial of certiorari) (slip op., at 3).