Appeals court upholds conviction of former Capitol police officer who tried to help rioter

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the conviction of a former U.S. Capitol police officer who tried to help a Virginia fisherman avoid criminal charges for joining a mob’s attack on the building that his law-enforcement colleagues defended on Jan. 6, 2021.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the government’s evidence against Michael Angelo Riley “readily supports” his conviction on an obstruction charge.

Riley, a 25-year police veteran, argued that prosecutors failed to prove a grand jury proceeding was foreseeable or that he deleted his Facebook messages to affect one. The panel rejected those arguments as “flawed.”

“Riley was a veteran Capitol Police officer concededly aware of the role of grand juries in the criminal process, and his own messages showed he expected felony prosecutions of unauthorized entrants into the Capitol building on January 6,” Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote.

In October 2022, a jury convicted Riley of one count of obstruction of an official proceeding but deadlocked on a second obstruction charge. In April 2023, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Riley to two years of probation and four months of home detention.

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