Judge delays NC man’s hearing on Jan. 6 Capitol violence charges. Here’s the latest.
A Lake Norman man charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., will have to wait a little longer to face a judge and enter a plea for the crimes the FBI says he committed.
In an exclusive interview Friday, Lee Stutts, 46, of Terrell, told The Charlotte Observer he would plead not guilty at his preliminary hearing that was supposed to be held Tuesday in U.S. Court in Washington, D.C.
Stutts’ appearance was instead rescheduled for Jan. 29, when he is expected to appear before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan via teleconference, court records showed.
His appearance is now listed in court records as an “arraignment and status conference.”
A defendant typically enters a plea during an arraignment, and a judge sets a bond.
Stutts didn’t immediately respond to a phone message from the Observer on Tuesday.
What is Lee Stutts charged with?
Stutts is accused of pushing and shoving officers with his hands, a barricade, a battering ram and a bike rack as he helped lead the Capitol breach on Jan. 6, 2021, according to the arrest warrant affidavit.
Stutts has been free since the FBI arrested him in November on charges of assaulting, resisting or impeding officers with a deadly or dangerous weapon and obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder, both felonies.
Stutts told the Observer last week that he thought antifa would be at the Capitol, but he instead encountered walls of law enforcement officers with shields and batons.
“I wore a helmet and had my fists,” Stutts said. “I roughhoused a little bit, but I didn’t punch them, none of that,” he said, referring to the assaults against law enforcement officers defending the Capitol.
“I went up there to support our country and to whup somebody’s ass from antifa,” he said. “We have to protect the people.”
By antifa, Stutts was referring to the far-left, anti-facist activists whom Donald Trump blamed for the protests against racial injustice across America in 2020.
On Jan. 6, 2021, after a speech by Trump, several thousand people ascended on the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. There, a crowd broke through police barricades, breached the building and attempted to stop the joint session of Congress where electoral votes were being counted in the 2020 presidential election.
Four people died that day. Another, a police officer, died the following day.
A woman was shot and killed by a police officer as she tried to climb through a broken window in the Capitol’s Speaker’s Lobby. Two men died of natural causes, and a woman died of an accidental amphetamine overdose. Brian Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer assaulted at the scene, died a day later from a stroke.
This story was originally published January 23, 2024 at 4:07 PM.