In the month since the riots at the U.S. Capitol building, hundreds of criminal cases have landed at the Washington, D.C., trial court. Judges there have held virtual hearing after hearing in the cases, while grand jurors have churned out indictments against the defendants.

The wave of cases is crashing into a pandemic that has forced the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to effectively halt all criminal trials for nearly a year now, as the courthouse doors are shuttered to all but an exempt few and proceedings are held virtually. Add the existing criminal backlog to the new cases, and it's expected that at least some of the Capitol criminal defendants could be tied up in federal court for years.