Is "distributing face shields to suspected rioters" a crime?

Question

It was recently in the news that federal law enforcement officers went to a person's house and arrested them on an allegation of previously "distributing face shields to suspected rioters". It's not clear to me whether the federal authorities suspected these people of being rioters, or whether they're alleging the person they arrested suspected these people of being rioters.

Notably, the news article I read did not note why one might expect doing that to be illegal.

Is there a law against giving people face shields if they are rioters, or if you suspect they might be rioters?

This happened in California, so I am interested in answers about California law or federal law.

Answer 1

england-and-wales

It depends

This answer deals with secondary liability as an accomplice. To ensure consistent referencing, I will assume the principal offence (ie. that committed by the rioters) was indictable. This is not a particularly limiting assumption as the statutory law is identical for summary offences (see: Section 44 of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980). However, if the rioters acted entirely lawfully, then this answer does not apply, as you cannot be an accomplice without there being a principal offender.

Under this assumption, we look to Section 8 of the Accessories and Abettors Act 1861, which states that:

whosoever shall aid, abet, counsel or procure the commission of any indictable offence … shall be tried, indicted and punished as a principal offender.

On this alone, it appears that your question's answer should be yes. However, two mens rea considerations complicate this conclusion.

Firstly, the defendant must have intentionally done the act which assisted (National Coal Board v Gamble). This is straightforwardly satisfied by the facts of your question. Secondly, the defendant must also have had the circumstances of the offence within their contemplation as a material possibility (Johnson v Youden). This is less clear and requires a more careful examination of the distributor's exact knowledge at the time.

To summarise: there is no blanket rule prohibiting someone from distributing face shields to a rioter. However, if any principal offenders are identified, then this act, coupled with the right intention, can lead to the distributor incurring criminal liability as an accomplice.

Answer 2

As pointed out in one of the comments, this is conspiracy.

The allegation won’t be that the distribution was done in ignorance, but rather with knowledge and intention to aide. The local Home Depot isn’t in any danger from this, nor would an average citizens whose neighbor asked if they knew where someone could get a face mask for some home repairs or similar innocuous reason.

It’s similar to the difference between public speeches that “X should be killed” and “go kill X”. Saying a politician should be shot for treason is one thing, saying go shoot the politician is something different. (At least in the US).

Also, while this particular item may be particularly useful for rioters, the charge would be the same if it was water bottles or tennis shoes.

Answer 3

This answer will focus on the to my knowledge only cited statue: "Conspiracy to Commit Civil Disorders (18 USC 371) "

Whether this charge will stand will be up to courts & juries but it faces a significant hurdle:

Why? Because it requires conspiracy, aka an agreement between people that a certain illegal act should be taken. This is borderline improvable for the given case. Firstly, the prosecution would have to prove that the person handing out the face shields did so to people they knew were going to commit crimes where those face shields helped with the intent of that crime happening. Aka the prosecution must prove that it was not the defendants intent to protect innocent protestors. The rioters [asserting that those exist for the sake of this question] taking advantage of the defendant under the guise of regular protestors is just as plausible and completely innocent, just like home depot selling stuff that would be used as murder weapons.

So the prosecution must find one person that received a face shield for whom it was obvious to the defendant that they were planning to committing crimes with the aid of that face shield when they gave it to them for this charge to stick.

So far on the technicalities. What will actually play out remains to be seen, from dropping the whole thing to new (and likely easier-to-prove) charges everything is within reach. Since the handing-out of the masks was done from a pickup truck traffic infractions come to mind but there are many more.

Given the pro-protester (to a degree) stance of the California governor & government, I would expect no non-federal charges to be pressed since federal officers cannot do that.