Federal prosecutors have been unable to persuade a grand jury to approve a felony indictment against a man who threw a sandwich at a federal agent on the streets of Washington this month.
The grand jury’s rejection of the felony charge was a remarkable failure by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington and the second time in recent days that a majority of grand jurors refused to vote to indict a person accused of felony assault on a federal agent. It also amounted to a sharp rebuke by a panel of ordinary citizens against the prosecutors assigned to bring charges against people arrested after President Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and federal agents to fight crime and patrol the city’s streets.
The rejection by grand jurors was particularly noteworthy given the attention paid to the case of the man who threw the sandwich, Sean C. Dunn. Video of the episode went viral on social media, senior officials talked about the case, and the administration posted footage of a large group of heavily armed law enforcement officers going to Dunn’s apartment. It remained unclear if prosecutors planned to try again to obtain an indictment against Dunn or refile his case as a misdemeanor, which does not require an indictment to move forward.
Dunn was initially charged on Aug. 13 in a criminal complaint accusing him of throwing a submarine sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer who was on patrol with other federal agents near the corner of 14th and U Streets in the northwest section of the capital. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro was widely ridiculed for the resources expended in pursuing charges for such a minor incident-- especially given a recent killing in the Anacostia neighborhood (where federal troops are not deployed).
It is extremely unusual for prosecutors to come out of a grand jury without obtaining an indictment because they are in control of the information that grand jurors hear about a case and defendants are not allowed to have their lawyers in the room as evidence is presented.
Convicted felon Donald Trump’s decision to flood the streets of DC with federal agents and military personnel who are generally not trained in conducting routine police stops has resulted in a flurry of defendants being charged with federal crimes that would typically be handled at the local court level, if they were filed at all. It has also led to an increasing number of embarrassments for federal prosecutors, who have had to dismiss weak cases or reduce the charges that defendants were facing in recent days.
Two days ago, for instance, prosecutors refiled a felony assault charge as a misdemeanor in the case of a woman who was accused of injuring an F.B.I. agent during a protest last month against immigration officials at the local jail in Washington. The charges were reduced against the woman after prosecutors failed not just once but three times to obtain an indictment in the case.
That same day, at the request of prosecutors, a federal magistrate judge dismissed all charges against a man who was arrested at a Trader Joe’s grocery store last week after an illegal search of his bag turned up two handguns. At the hearing, the magistrate judge, Zia M. Faruqui, lambasted prosecutors for having charged the man, Torez Riley, in an apparent violation of his constitutional rights. “Lawlessness cannot come from the government,” Judge Faruqui said, according to HuffPost. “We’re pushing the boundaries here.”
In a separate case, the judge blasted federal prosecutors and corrections officials on Tuesday for having allowed a woman, Kristal Rios-Esquivel, to remain in jail for nearly six days after she was arrested for allegedly spitting on a National Zoo police sergeant. Rios-Esquivel’s lawyer had submitted an emergency motion to the judge seeking her release and ended her filing with a single word, “HELP!!!” The woman was ultimately freed, but Judge Faruqui pointed out in an order that she had somehow been allowed to languish behind bars even though prosecutors had not asked for her to be detained. “This is inexcusable,” he wrote.
Court-watchers are waiting to see how Pirro reacts in the case of a man who this week was arrested and charged with a felony for allegedly spitting on two National Guard members at Union Station. Stay tuned.
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