January 6 rioter Joshua Black is facing up to 10 years in prison after a federal judge on Friday found him guilty of disorderly conduct in a restricted building while carrying a dangerous weapon.
However, Black was able to dodge the most serious charge as U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that he could not be convicted of obstruction of Congress’ joint session because the defendant’s “unique stew in his mind” that left her uncertain whether he was aware that his actions were unlawful, Politico reports.
Black told investigators he breached the US Senate floor to “plead the blood of Jesus” and “absolve the chamber of evil spirits.”
The MAGA fanatic was charged with multiple felonies including “obstruction of an official proceeding,” which carries a maximum 20-year sentence.
But Jackson argued that prosecutors failed to support the charge with evidence proving Black’s “corrupt” intent, emphasizing that Black had both religious and political reasons for his presence in Washington on Jan. 6 — a mixed motive that she said was rooted both in his claim to have “the Lord’s imprimatur” and his steady diet of social media disinformation about the election results.
The judge spent a significant portion of Friday’s session explaining why evidence that Black intended to block Congress — or even was familiar with the congressional proceedings occurring that day — was “absent from the government’s case,” according to Politico.
Jackson found Black guilty of other charges he faced, including disorderly conduct in a restricted building while carrying a dangerous weapon — a knife — a felony that carries a maximum 10-year sentence.
Black claimed that he carried his knife instead of a gun in order to abide by D.C. gun laws, and he kept the knife in case he needed it for self-defense.
As noted by Politico, “that intended purpose — for use against another person, even in self-defense — was enough to characterize the knife as a deadly weapon.”
