Obstruction of justice does not just refer to hiding a weapon of crime, obscuring important evidence, or trying to convince someone to commit perjury. But criminal obstruction is not often related to such a big and dramatic event.
Most obstruction charges are prosecuted at the state level, arising from small, easy-to-overlook actions rather than the dramatic scenarios most people picture, and federal data on the small share of cases it does track suggests the conduct is far more common than the headlines around it would imply.
Investigations depend on the continuous flow of free communication between witnesses and investigators. Inhibiting such actions can lead to an improper investigation process. Under specific laws like ARS 13-2409, interfering with the process through bribery, misrepresentation, intimidation, or force or threats of force constitutes a separate violation of the law. This violation runs alongside the original crime.
What Counts As Obstruction
The behavior that leads to these allegations revolves around several consistent patterns. This pattern includes warning a witness not to say anything, either by making direct threats against them or by suggesting that they may face some form of consequence if they do. Misleading an investigator by providing false information to push an investigation away from the suspect is common practice and is seen by many when a friend, family member, or coworker hinders the investigation. Evidence destroyed, hidden, or altered before police arrive can be deemed obstruction.
Telling a suspect that the police are going to arrest them could also lead to charges of obstruction. These do not necessarily have to involve a person in the crime itself. A person unrelated to the case, such as a neighbor, can still receive obstruction charges for misleading the police in some way.
Why Intent Is the Hinge Point
Most obstruction laws require that the individual do so knowingly rather than accidentally. An individual who sincerely misremembers something during an interview is not obstructing anything. When an individual has deliberately altered his or her story to help someone else or has instructed another party on how to testify ahead of the investigation, that conduct falls squarely within the scope of obstruction.
This is one reason why obstruction cases are not always straightforward to defend. It is rare that there is one act that constitutes obstruction of justice in the eyes of the law. Prosecutors build the case using time, phone records, and inconsistencies in accounts given to several individuals.
The defense must use the exact same pieces of evidence to construct a different story altogether, which is where an attorney’s experience matters most. Ellijay criminal defense lawyer Sarah Sevcech leverages her experience both inside and outside the courtroom so she can see past the immediate legal issue and truly understand what is at stake for her clients.
How These Charges Tend to Arise in Practice
Obstruction charges will usually be secondary to the actual criminal offense. A person is drawn into an investigation involving domestic violence, drugs, or theft as a witness, and their behavior results in a new crime that is charged separately from the investigation that led to the witness participation. A defendant under duress from the friends or family members caught up in the primary crime may not understand that their efforts to help may result in another charge.
Under Arizona law, obstruction is treated as a serious felony matter, not a minor add-on charge. The classification can escalate further depending on the circumstances alleged. There is a huge variation in how different states define what obstruction is and what the penalties associated with it are. Even the elements and the burden of proof required of a prosecutor vary from state to state.
Georgia has a different rule for obstruction and usually classifies it under misdemeanor cases. It becomes a felony with imprisonment of one to five years when the objectionable person has used or threatened violence. This difference means that the act of giving a false story to help guide an investigation somewhere else will likely be charged as a felony in Arizona but may not rise above a misdemeanor in Georgia. Since the definition of behavior and associated punishments vary between states, the elements that the prosecution must prove vary also.
The outcome of a prosecution case involving obstruction heavily depends on the location of the case at hand, especially since state laws are subject to change.
What To Do If You’re Facing One of These Charges
Anyone who is interviewed by police officers as part of an investigation, whether they are being interrogated as a witness rather than a suspect, should give a lot of thought to what they are going to say prior to making a statement.
Cooperation does not necessarily require them to answer all the questions asked by the police. If there is an existing charge, the details that seemed very clear at the time may look quite different when analyzed through cross-examination after several months.
Obstruction of justice does not just refer to hiding a weapon of crime, obscuring important evidence, or trying to convince someone to commit perjury. But criminal obstruction is not often related to such a big and dramatic event.
Most obstruction charges are prosecuted at the state level, arising from small, easy-to-overlook actions rather than the dramatic scenarios most people picture, and federal data on the small share of cases it does track suggests the conduct is far more common than the headlines around it would imply.
Investigations depend on the continuous flow of free communication between witnesses and investigators. Inhibiting such actions can lead to an improper investigation process. Under specific laws like ARS 13-2409, interfering with the process through bribery, misrepresentation, intimidation, or force or threats of force constitutes a separate violation of the law. This violation runs alongside the original crime.
What Counts As Obstruction
The behavior that leads to these allegations revolves around several consistent patterns. This pattern includes warning a witness not to say anything, either by making direct threats against them or by suggesting that they may face some form of consequence if they do. Misleading an investigator by providing false information to push an investigation away from the suspect is common practice and is seen by many when a friend, family member, or coworker hinders the investigation. Evidence destroyed, hidden, or altered before police arrive can be deemed obstruction.
Telling a suspect that the police are going to arrest them could also lead to charges of obstruction. These do not necessarily have to involve a person in the crime itself. A person unrelated to the case, such as a neighbor, can still receive obstruction charges for misleading the police in some way.
Why Intent Is the Hinge Point
Most obstruction laws require that the individual do so knowingly rather than accidentally. An individual who sincerely misremembers something during an interview is not obstructing anything. When an individual has deliberately altered his or her story to help someone else or has instructed another party on how to testify ahead of the investigation, that conduct falls squarely within the scope of obstruction.
This is one reason why obstruction cases are not always straightforward to defend. It is rare that there is one act that constitutes obstruction of justice in the eyes of the law. Prosecutors build the case using time, phone records, and inconsistencies in accounts given to several individuals.
The defense must use the exact same pieces of evidence to construct a different story altogether, which is where an attorney’s experience matters most. Ellijay criminal defense lawyer Sarah Sevcech leverages her experience both inside and outside the courtroom so she can see past the immediate legal issue and truly understand what is at stake for her clients.
How These Charges Tend to Arise in Practice
Obstruction charges will usually be secondary to the actual criminal offense. A person is drawn into an investigation involving domestic violence, drugs, or theft as a witness, and their behavior results in a new crime that is charged separately from the investigation that led to the witness participation. A defendant under duress from the friends or family members caught up in the primary crime may not understand that their efforts to help may result in another charge.
Under Arizona law, obstruction is treated as a serious felony matter, not a minor add-on charge. The classification can escalate further depending on the circumstances alleged. There is a huge variation in how different states define what obstruction is and what the penalties associated with it are. Even the elements and the burden of proof required of a prosecutor vary from state to state.
Georgia has a different rule for obstruction and usually classifies it under misdemeanor cases. It becomes a felony with imprisonment of one to five years when the objectionable person has used or threatened violence. This difference means that the act of giving a false story to help guide an investigation somewhere else will likely be charged as a felony in Arizona but may not rise above a misdemeanor in Georgia. Since the definition of behavior and associated punishments vary between states, the elements that the prosecution must prove vary also.
The outcome of a prosecution case involving obstruction heavily depends on the location of the case at hand, especially since state laws are subject to change.
What To Do If You’re Facing One of These Charges
Anyone who is interviewed by police officers as part of an investigation, whether they are being interrogated as a witness rather than a suspect, should give a lot of thought to what they are going to say prior to making a statement.
Cooperation does not necessarily require them to answer all the questions asked by the police. If there is an existing charge, the details that seemed very clear at the time may look quite different when analyzed through cross-examination after several months.
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