Mercer County woman seeks less restrictions while awaiting trial for Jan. 6 riot charges
A Mercer County woman charged in the Jan. 6 riot in Washington, D.C., wants location monitoring and curfew removed from her pretrial release orders.
Rachel Powell, 41, of Sandy Lake, asked a federal judge to modify her conditions of release because they are interfering with her ability to raise her children.
When she was released from pretrial custody in February 2021, Powell, a mother of six, was placed in home detention and ordered to submit to location monitoring and a curfew.
In a recently filed petition, she argues that the residence she rented on her employer’s property after selling her house to raise money for her defense is not large enough to accommodate three of her teenage sons, who live together in a nearby efficiency dwelling.
Powell can’t enter the efficiency after 6 p.m. because the equipment that supports her GPS location monitoring ankle bracelet can’t be installed there, she said.
The efficiency is on a hill above a lake. One of her teenage sons fell down the hill into a lake while fishing recently, but she was not able to help him because of her monitor, Powell said.
Those sons are on their own at night and have the “inherent mischief-making capacity of teenage boys,” she said in her court petition.
Home detention has prevented her from driving her kids to extracurricular activities at school and will force her to miss the marriage of an older child and the birth of a grandchild, she said.
The curfew limits her to work 40 hours a week, which is less than normal, and prevents her from attending business meetings and client calls, she said.
Her petition also argues that her visit to friends to seek legal advice before she was arrested was not an attempt to flee, and she surrendered to authorities the day she was charged.
“The contention that she is a flight risk, over a year into this case, is baseless,” her attorney Nicholas Smith argued in the petition.
In arguments opposing Powell’s petition, the U.S. Attorney’s office said her residence is not the same place she lived after she was arrested, and she she moved there despite its alleged lack of space for all of her children.
The children’s primary residence is with their father, and her children visit her, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Rochlin.
In addition, evidence against Powell “reflects her tolerance for and participation in acts of violence and destruction, as well as a willingness to dispense with ties to her home and family when convenient,” according to the government’s motion.
An Oct. 14, 2020, social media post from Powell says she agrees that there is a possibility of a civil war, according to the motion.
According to the filing, the post goes on to say: “Unfortunately, the only way this is probably capable of being fixed is bloodshed because I’m not so sure our government can be fixed the political way anymore either.”
Then, she was seen on video at the Jan. 6, 2021 riot wearing a pink hat that helped authorities identify her. She left her minor children unattended at home that day, according to the motion.
On the Capitol grounds, she was part of a crowd that pushed against police and police barriers, and indifferently watched an officer being attacked, according to the motion.
Powell spent more than two hours in the archway of the Capitol Building before using a bullhorn to tell rioters inside about the floor plan and saying, “coordinate together if you’re going to take this building,” according to the motion.
Later, she told the group inside that they “have another window to break,” the government said.
She crawled through an already-broken window and entered office space near the archway and used an ice ax and a large pipe to break a window, according to the motion.
Powell is facing charges of obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, disorderly conduct in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, act of physical violence on the Capitol grounds or buildings and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a capitol building.
