Former Savannah man charged in Jan. 6 attack cites pending Supreme Court case in plea deal refusal

Caption

In this photo provided by the FBI, the man in the yellow circle is identified by an agent as Dominic Box on the east stairs of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Credit: FBI

A former Savannah car salesman charged with participating in the Jan. 6 insurrection says that he intends to wait for a pending U.S. Supreme Court case to be decided before proceeding with his own.

Dominic Box, who faces four federal charges in connection with the attack on the U.S. Capitol, wrote through his attorney in a new court filing that Fischer v. United States has a direct bearing on his case because it involves the same charge to which Box would plead guilty in a tentative plea deal offered by prosecutors.

In Fischer, a different Jan. 6 defendant argues that the charge of obstruction with an official proceeding of Congress does not apply to those accused of physical force, since the law was enacted after the Enron scandal and was meant only to penalize evidence-tampering involving a congressional proceeding.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols — an appointee of former President Donald Trump — agreed with that argument. His decision, however, was reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which found that, under “the most natural reading of the statute, [the law] applies to all forms of corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding.”

The Supreme Court agreed in December to review the case. A hearing has not been scheduled.

Box wrote that a plea deal he signed in October — which has not been signed by a judge — would see him plead guilty to one charge of obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress. As is typical of plea deals, it includes a condition that Box waive his right to appeal the conviction.

Shortly after Box's filing on Jan. 16, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly canceled a scheduled hearing on the plea deal. She has set a status conference for Feb. 21 to discuss the case.

Box's filing states that he suggested alternative plea deals, including one that would not waive his right to appeal. Prosecutors declined his proposals.

U.S. Marshals were ordered by Kollar-Kotelly to bring Box to federal court late last year after he was charged with driving under the influence, careless driving, driving with a suspended license and possession of an open container of alcohol in Jacksonville, Fla. A sheriff's deputy there wrote that Box yelled at him and called him racial slurs.