Capitol Rioter Decides to Represent Himself in Court, Accidentally Admits to Two New Felonies

[babylonsister]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/brandon-fellows-decides-to-represent-himself-in-court-accidentally-admits-to-two-new-felonies?ref=home

Capitol Rioter Decides to Represent Himself in Court, Accidentally Admits to Two New Felonies
BADLY MISJUDGED
Jamie Ross
News Correspondent
Published Oct. 13, 2021 6:14AM ET
Reuters/Stephanie Keith

A Capitol rioter who allegedly smoked weed in a senator’s office on Jan. 6 decided to represent himself in court on Tuesday—and it went exactly as badly as could have been expected. Washington, D.C. news network WUSA reports that the wild hearing opened with a judge advising Brandon Fellows against representing himself, but he ignored that warning and went on to bolster the case against him by admitting to two new felonies. “Most people do not do this,” U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden reportedly told Fellows. “I do not think this is a good idea… but I’m going to allow you to take the stand, if you wish.” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mona Furst reportedly got Fellows to admit that he gained access to the Capitol through a broken window, and that he tried to get a previous judge removed from the case using the judge’s wife’s contact information. At the end of the hearing, McFadden ordered Fellows back into custody and told him: “You’ve admitted to incredible lapses of judgment here on the stand, not least of which was seeking to disqualify a New York state judge.”

[malaise]

1. incredible lapses of judgment?

CRIMES!

That is all

[hatrack]

8. Yeah, but as the judge in the case, she can't say that . . ..

Though you're not wrong!

Sorry, "he".

[malaise]

10. LOL

I'm saying it for her

[Champp]

2. The Republican traitors did a lot of dumb stuff as...

they violently attacked America and American democracy.

[Croney]

3. He had a fool for a client and a fool for a lawyer.

[lagomorph777]

25. And he put a real fool on the witness stand.

witless witness

[Jerry2144]

31. Fool is an understatement

Much like losing both arms and your legs is just a scratch.

[lagomorph777]

33. "I've had worse!"

[cab67]

39. The result of the court proceeding was a draw.

[C Moon]

41. That's good

[monkeyman1]

72. trump University of stupid ! graduated with honors ! first in his class !

[Scrivener7]

4. I bet he gets the stiffest sentence yet. Like two months.

[RVN VET71]

18. Sarcasm duly notes

And sadly agreed with.

[jaxexpat]

48. But that's like 86,400 minutes!

Where's the humanity?

[UCmeNdc]

5. Republicans are crazy!

[liberalla]

6. OMG...

. .

sheesh...

[Ohioboy]

7. I wish they would all do this

Maybe we could convince them that this kind of thing "owns the libs".

[Stuart G]

9. Here it is again.........."Stupid...is ...STILL STUPID"..nt..

[KS Toronado]

29. To quote one Congressional Medal of Honor recipient

"Stupid is as stupid does"

[UpInArms]

11. More at this link ...

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/national/capitol-riots/capitol-rioter-brandon-fellows-admits-to-two-new-felonies-while-representing-himself-in-bond-hearing-judge-trevor-mcfadden/65-a40af9c2-9809-4adb-aaec-7e36ad12b308

McFadden, having listened to him talk for nearly two hours, then brought Fellows back down to Earth.

“You are charged with a federal felony,” McFadden said. “This is not a community college where you get pats on the back.”

“You’ve admitted to incredible lapses of judgment here on the stand, not least of which was seeking to disqualify a New York state judge,” the judge continued. “You’ve admitted to obstruction of justice in that case, and you’ve admitted to what was probably obstruction in this case in trying to have me disqualified, and only Ms. Halverson’s advice stopped you from doing so. You’ve engaged in a pattern of behaviors that shows contempt for the criminal justice system, and I just have no confidence that you will follow my orders if I release you.”

McFadden then denied Fellows’ request to reopen his detention status and ordered him back into the custody of the D.C. Jail.

[lagomorph777]

28. Whoah - no Cancun vacay?

Should've hired a lawyer.

[hibbing]

12. Side note, Republicans don't favor legalization n/t

[Jon King]

13. Repugs astound with their combo of arrogance and ignorance.

Absolutely convinced they know more about infectious disease than Dr. Fauci and more about the law than a lawyer. Its always our very dumbest that are convinced they are brilliant.

[mucifer]

16. Problem is most of them are white and most judges are white so they tend to get

away with a lot of crimes.

Studies show if the judge is of the same race or culture of the defendant they don't serve as much time in prison.

[WHITT]

14. When A Judge Breaks Protocol

and tells you:

“Most people do not do this,” U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden reportedly told Fellows. “I do not think this is a good idea… but I’m going to allow you to take the stand, if you wish.”

You should take heed.

[oldsoftie]

20. "I got muh rights!"

[knightmaar]

15. Never interrupt an enemy when he's in the middle of making a mistake.

Napolean or Sun Tzu or somebody.

I guess the judge had to interrupt him, legally speaking, but I'd be interrupting him in a way where he totally wouldn't listen to me.

[NJCher]

49. I'm betting it was for the record because this fool doesn't listen to anybody

I'd be interrupting him in a way where he totally wouldn't listen to me.

Then I'd say, "Please proceed, Governor." I would then put my hand over my mouth to hide my smirk.

[ck4829]

17. Apparently, he "did his own research"

A 26-year-old New York man accused of entering the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6 has decided to represent himself after spending two weeks in the D.C. Jail’s law library, he told a judge Tuesday morning.

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/national/capitol-riots/after-two-weeks-in-jail-law-library-maverick-capitol-riot-defendant-brandon-fellows-wants-to-represent-himself-orange-beard-pro-se-merkley/65-370ca35f-a669-4f74-8505-85fd2ba32393

[niyad]

21. I know of a woman, a co-worker of a friend, who, because she "has a law book"

feels free to give out "legal" advice to customers, and on her fb page. What bothers me is that there are people willing to listen to this barely-literate high school dropout. (This is qbert country however, so perhaps not surprising.)

[NJCher]

50. she can get in trouble for that

someone should report this to the administrative division of the courts for whatever state she is in.

[niyad]

54. Thank you for this. I have relayed to her several times that she is courting legal jeopardy.

[rpannier]

24. D.C. Jail's law library

Thought maybe he was a graduate of the Univ of Google

[Pinback]

46. Probably did his undergrad at Instagram Polytechnic. (nt)

[nuxvomica]

19. When I saw the headline I figured it was Fellows

Local guy, from Niskayuna, who is seriously stupid.

[Effete Snob]

43. "He also missed his court-ordered mental health evaluation."

Fellows also noted that had been abused as a child, has Asperger’s syndrome and ADHD and is a slow learner.

At least Democrats have gotten over their pre-Reagan-era fixation on things like community mental health services. Instead, we let these things fester and result in undesirable consequences, which then provides a reason to go after them while feeling morally superior about it.

We're on a glide path back to dressing them funny in public and throwing things at them.

He may be clinically stupid, but we had to quit using terms like "idiot" and "moron" in the clinical sense. We quit sterilizing them too.

[mucifer]

22. I want to see a video of his reaction to the judge in the moment.

Probably not gonna happen.

I'm evil

[2Gingersnaps]

26. No doubt, world's greatest victim of the deep state!

Couldn't possibly be that he's an idiot. I'm guessing blank "does not compute" stare, then squirrelling conspiracy suspicion.

[Effete Snob]

45. "Couldn't possibly be that he's an idiot."

He mentioned his previous mental health diagnoses in the hearing, which is also noted in the article.

From Wikipedia:

In 19th- and early 20th-century medicine and psychology, an "idiot" was a person with a very profound intellectual disability. In the early 1900s, Dr. Henry H. Goddard proposed a classification system for intellectual disability based on the Binet-Simon concept of mental age. Individuals with the lowest mental age level (less than three years) were identified as idiots; imbeciles had a mental age of three to seven years, and morons had a mental age of seven to ten years.

According to Mr. Fellows, he has ADHD, Asperger's, and was classified as a "slow learner". He's probably much higher functioning than a person who would have previously been classified as an "idiot" or what would have been characterized a few years ago as:

In the obsolete medical classification (ICD-9, 1977), these people were said to have "profound mental retardation" or "profound mental subnormality" with IQ under 20.

He skipped his court-ordered mental health evaluation, but seems to be able to list the various things he's been called by people who have examined him or attempted to educate him.

[cab67]

36. I want to see the whole proceeding!

[rpannier]

23. fool for a client

[tanyev]

27. Trump really missed an opportunity by not offering law and medical "schools" at Trump University.

He would have had plenty of marks, I mean students.

[cab67]

38. Not sure how many marks there'd have been.

He would have to find someone talented enough to draw the parrot next to the coupon, but not talented enough to know any such medical or law school would be an obvious scam. That's a narrow range of people indeed.

[jmowreader]

51. As an aside, I wish someone could find this...

In the 1970s the mail-order art school had you draw a horse…so MAD Magazine did a two-pager where every artist on staff drew the horse in his own style.

[reACTIONary]

71. Is this it?

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/179369997649526670/

Google /"MAD Magazine" horse drawing/

It comes up at the top of the image search.

[SouthernDem4ever]

74. LOL Great find!

[sarge43]

30. Living proof that stupid can not be cured. n/t

[Stuart G]

35. More Proof: .........Donald Trump......!!!

Even with the....." best of help" ...."Stupid can NOT BE CURED"

[Effete Snob]

44. Probably not

Given that fact, what should we do about stupid people in general.

Obviously, there are going to be a relatively fixed percentage of the population which is not very smart, and may have organic brain disorders or other issues, like the ones with which Mr. Fellows has been previously diagnosed.

If we can't "cure" people like Fellows (who listed his diagnoses), what should we do with them?

[NJCher]

52. this is a very good question

and from your post upthread, I am guessing we as a society have dropped the ball on providing mental health resources.

However, it says he missed a mental health appointment so something was being ordered for him. This may have been in conjunction with the court appearances?

By not doing something for such people, we are allowing them to fall into the arms of hucksters like trump who will use them up and then dump them in prison,then the province of public responsibility.

[Effete Snob]

56. Yes, the court ordered a mental health evaluation

That is often done in cases, like this one, where a party seeks to represent themselves, because it would be a reversible error if a court were to allow a mentally incompetent person to do so.

But we - as a society in general and as nominal "liberals" in particular - no longer give a shit whether someone involved in the criminal justice system or captured doing something outrageous on social media is mentally ill. We just don't. We are back to the medieval practice of just making fun of them in public or expressing moral outrage at them. It's easy, fun to do, and makes us feel superior and good about ourselves.

By not doing something for such people, we are allowing them to fall into the arms of hucksters like trump who will use them up and then dump them in prison,then the province of public responsibility.

Bingo, but we don't give a shit. There's tons of material on social media, this site included, which are more or less "Hey, let's make fun of the re***d!" popular on playgrounds past, and more or less aligned with the childhood years of what seem to be the general age range on sites like this.

We've even revived the classic terminology:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_idiot

The village idiot was long considered an acceptable social role, a unique individual who was dependent yet contributed to the social fabric of his community. As early as Byzantine times, the "village idiot" was treated as an acceptable form of disabled individual compatible with then-prevailing normative conceptions of social order.

The internet enables all sorts of what would have been marginal populations of isolated deviants to form "communities" of like-ill-minded people, and they are as you say ripe for the picking.

[Effete Snob]

62. Precisely

That's is why it is much more satisfying to make them objects of public scorn and ridicule in the first place.

I wasn't asking anyone to be sympathetic to them.

People of marginal or low intelligence are readily roped into these sorts of dangerous things, which is why it is important not to let them get inflated opinions of themselves in the first place.

Time honored traditional practices of dealing with them worked for a reason.

[SheltieLover]

32. I'll take Who has a Fool for a Client for $1,000!

[packman]

34. How does that old saying go

Better to shut your mouth and let people think you are a fool than open it and confirm you are

[Stuart G]

37. ...I think a very bright person said that...Abe Lincoln, or another bright one, Mark Twain"

.....depends on how you interpret those words and that idea.....Evidently both said the idea..in different sentences..

[notinkansas]

40. The article doesn't mention a sentencing date.

Will be interesting to see how that goes.

[C Moon]

42. Typical QAnon attitude.

[SCantiGOP]

47. I have a friend who is an attorney

The first time he represented a client in Court, they were standing before the judge going through routine questions.
The judge asked if he had ever been convicted of a felony, to which he replied, “No Sir, this will be my first.”
When the judge asked how he intended to plead, his attorney said, “Well, now I guess we better plead Guilty.”

[Bernardo de La Paz]

53. Let's Go Brandon!

The idiot criminal's name is Brandon Fellows.

[tulipsandroses]

55. He said he did his research

He spent the 2 weeks he was in jail at the jail law library. Proof that “research” doesn’t make you an expert

[Permanut]

57. Dunning-Kruger strikes again. n/t K & R

[Rabrrrrrr]

58. I'm sure that the guy thinks he's as much an expert on the Constitution as he is CRT

and viral science and everything else just because he's read some of the Constitution once and listens to FOX News and OAN and "Rush told me so".

[babylonsister]

59. Hey you! I'm sure you're

right. He must have done his reesurch.

[Patton French]

60. What a dumb ass..

A man (in this case insurrectionist) who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client.

[Tommy Carcetti]

63. Did he also smoke weed right before the hearing? nt

[Vinca]

64. And that, in a nutshell, is why MAGAts aren't rocket scientists.

[Moebym]

65. One important lesson I've learned in my years as a true crime enthusiast

Is that defendants should never represent themselves in court. It never ends well.

[malthaussen]

66. Oh, boy! Two more one-month suspended sentences! n/t

[bucolic_frolic]

67. Lemme tell you something. Recognize there are times when you need an expert

I have enough problems representing myself as my own DIY auto mechanic.

[TomSlick]

68. I love it when a party attempts to represent themself.

They're playing my game on my court - so to speak. They don't know the rules or how things proceed. They almost always say things that they should not and don't say what they should.

The only downside is that judges often bend-over backwards to protect the pro se party, sometimes essentially becoming their lawyer.

[marmar]

69. I suppose that when you're that stupid, you have no idea how stupid you are.

[Blue Owl]

70. This guy's a prodigy, like Jacob Wohl

[Justice matters.]

73. Should have asked the orange terrorist to pay him a lawyer...

as he promised these deplorables he would do?

[raccoon]

75. This warms my heart. Nt