WASHINGTON — The nearly 900 Capitol insurrection-related arrests moving their way through the court system make up an average of 40% of all appearances on the District of Columbia District Court calendar each week.
Alongside the routine federal cases the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia would otherwise handle — dealing with murder, kidnapping, fraud, drug trafficking and child pornography, among other crimes — are a flood of status and sentencing hearings, evidence negotiations, jury selection proceedings and trials for those arrested across the country for their actions on Jan. 6, 2021.
There's little flexibility in the schedule to accommodate delays, and those that inevitably happen can reverberate through the system, affecting other criminal and civil cases.
