One of the charges filed against Judge Hannah Dugan has been issued only twice before in Wisconsin since 1970, according to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel review of court records.
Federal authorities have accused Dugan of helping an undocumented immigrant defendant evade arrest by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Dugan was charged April 25 with a misdemeanor and a felony — one for concealing a person to prevent his arrest and the other for obstructing a proceeding before a U.S. department.
While the misdemeanor concealing charge is relatively common, the felony obstruction charge is rarely used and is an obscure part of the federal criminal law originally developed to thwart business monopolies, the Journal Sentinel found.
Obstructing a federal agency is also known as Section 1505 of the federal criminal code.
The felony charge originates from the 1962 Antitrust Civil Process Act, a law meant to help the federal government fight business corruption and monopolies.
Since 1970, just two federal cases have been filed under that statute in Wisconsin. Both of the cases — one from 2017 and one from 2022 — involved businesses that allegedly lied to federal workplace safety inspectors.
The 2017 case involved a company that lied to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, about the existence of asbestos during an investigation. The 2022 case involved a company that lied about knowledge of flammable materials that would eventually claim the lives of five workers in a factory explosion.
Both companies were convicted.
Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School and former federal prosecutor, said the rarity of the charge means that the public has few reference points for how things might play out.
However, a similar federal obstruction charge used in one of Jan. 6 Capitol riot cases may be a useful comparison, Levenson said.
A former police officer, Joseph Fischer, entered the U.S. Capitol during the January 6, 2021 riot. He was charged with section 1512(c)(2) of the federal criminal law, which concerns those who “otherwise obstructs” any “official proceeding, or attempts to do so,” according to the federal criminal code.
The U.S. Supreme Court decided in that case that prosecutors were stretching the original purpose of the statute. The justices ruled the obstruction charge applied only in relation to the first section of the law where someone is physically tampering with evidence.
“I think there’s going to be an interesting discussion on whether this statute was ever designed to apply in this situation,” Levenson said of the Dugan case.
Reporter Eva Wen can be reached at [email protected]
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Felony charge filed against Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan rarely used
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