A U.S. District Court judge had a few choice words for a Crown Point man who was pardoned by President Donald Trump on Monday along with more than 1,500 defendants involved in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Prosecutors requested that Judge Amy Berman Jackson grant Gregory Mijares a dismissal with prejudice, meaning that prosecutors couldn’t re-file charges at some point.
Mijares, who was set to go to trial in March, was one of four Northwest Indiana men who were charged with various offenses including civil disorder, assaulting police officers, violent entry, and entering a restricted building. Video showed him fighting with police and stealing their riot shields to use against them, and smashing windows to gain entry to the Capitol.
Jackson, who serves on the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, said the motion was absent any facts showing that Mijares’ indictment was legally or factually flawed.
“Moreover, a dismissal with prejudice would dishonor the hundreds of law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line against impossible odds to protect not only the U.S. Capitol building and the people who worked there — who were huddled inside in terror as windows and doors were shattered — but to protect the very essence of democracy: the peaceful transfer of power,” Jackson wrote. “It would dishonor those valiant officers who fulfilled their oaths to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’ 5 U.S.C. § 3331.
“They are the patriots. Patriotism is loyalty to country and loyalty to the Constitution — not loyalty to a single head of state. No stroke of a pen and no proclamation can alter the facts of what took place on January 6, 2021. When others in the public eye are not willing to risk their own power or popularity by calling out lies when they hear them, the record of the proceedings in this courthouse will be available to those who seek the truth.”
Jackson dismissed the indictment without prejudice, which allows charges to potentially be re-filed. Her words were echoed by fellow U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who dismissed charges without prejudice against John Banuelos, of Summit, Illinois — one of more than 50 Illinois residents charged in the insurrection — on Wednesday.
“In hundreds of cases like this one over the past four years, judges in this district have administered justice without fear or favor,” Chutkan wrote. “The historical record established by those proceedings must stand, unmoved by political winds, as a testament and as a warning.”
Dale Huttle, 73, of Crown Point, was released Monday from FCI Thomson, a federal prison near the Illinois-Iowa border, according to the federal inmate lookup. He had served about 6 months in prison; his original release date was in December 2026.
Court filings state Huttle had two “violent confrontations” with law enforcement officers on the building’s Lower West Terrace. That afternoon, as the crowd was pulling bike racks used as a barrier, Dale Huttle went to the front of the crowd and hit at least two officers with a long flagpole, according to a release. A half-hour later, he allegedly grabbed another officer’s baton, yelling: “Surrender!”
His nephew, Matthew Huttle, 42, of Hebron, was also at the Capitol and served six months in prison — essentially for trespassing.
A pardon doesn’t automatically expunge a conviction, i.e. wipe it off someone’s record, Indiana University Maurer School of Law Professor Cindy Cho, a former federal prosecutor, said in an email.
Matthew Graves, the now-former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, said the pardons can’t erase what people witnessed.
“There will always be a public record of what occurred on January 6th, and people who care to know the facts will be able to find out the facts,” Graves told the Associated Press.
In January 2021, a fourth man, Kash Lee Kelly of Hammond, was charged in the District of Columbia with two misdemeanor counts, knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful entry, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, according to the charging documents.
“The day we let the Traitors who constantly push the divide in OUR country know that we are done playing their games,” Kelly wrote on social media at the time. “All ppl of all colors came together today and I couldn’t be more proud to be an AMERICAN.”
Kelly was sentenced to 60 days in prison and ordered to pay $500 in restitution. He was released in January 2024.
Fourteen defendants, including several convicted of seditious conspiracy, had their sentences commuted, while the rest of those found guilty of Jan. 6 crimes were granted “full, complete and unconditional” pardons.
More than 1,500 people were charged in nearly every state in connection with the Jan. 6 breach, according to a release. More than 500 were charged for impeding or assaulting police.
Aside from trying to overturn the 2020 Presidential election, the insurrection injured more than 100 cops and caused nearly $3 million in damages, court filings show.
The Chicago Tribune, the Associated Press and Post-Tribune archives contributed.