Charges Against Chicago’s Broadview Six Dismissed With Prejudice

National Guard Troops Stand Outside The ICE Facility In Broadview, Illinois — Source: The Washington Post / Getty

There is perhaps no better example of the incompetence endemic to the Trump administration than how often they shoot themselves in the foot with lawsuits, whether by filing frivolous cases with no chance of success or by engaging in prosecutorial misconduct. The latter is what led to a judge dismissing a case against four people who were facing charges stemming from a protest outside an ICE detention facility in a Chicago suburb.

The Guardian reports that Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, Michael Rabbitt, Andre Martin, and Brian Straw were initially charged with conspiring to impede an officer, a felony, last October. Federal prosecutors alleged that the four were among the so-called “Broadview Six” who surrounded an ICE agent’s vehicle during Operation Midway Blitz, one of ICE’s many immigration crackdowns over the last year. It was alleged that the six banged on the agent’s car, broke a rear windshield wiper (oh no, not a wiper!), and scratched the word “pig” on their car.

While these are just allegations, I honestly don’t see what the problem is. You behave like a pig, you get treated like a pig. That’s just, like, the rules, you know?

The case was showing signs of collapsing in April after charges were dropped completely against two of the Broadview Six. The remaining four defendants only had misdemeanor charges of impeding a federal officer after the conspiracy charges were dropped. According to CBS News, this stemmed from questions U.S. District Judge April Perry had about how federal prosecutors conducted themselves during grand jury proceedings.

From CBS News:

In that sealed hearing, Perry summarized several issues she said jumped out at her “immediately and glaringly” upon reading the full grand jury transcript. The first of those concerns, according to the judge, was improper “prosecutorial vouching,” in which an assistant U.S. attorney put “her personal credibility and trustworthiness on the line in support of the charges,” Perry said.

The same prosecutor also apparently excused grand jurors “who disagreed with the government’s case” when presented with it during the first of three sessions, asking them “to not partake in the second hearing,” the judge said.

Perry said she understood from the transcripts that there had been “improper prosecutorial communications of a substantive nature with the grand jurors outside of the grand jury room.”

Perry said she was “incredibly shocked” by the government’s redactions. “I have read hundreds, if not thousands, of grand jury transcripts involving prosecutors who are the most junior of prosecutors to several U.S. Attorneys who appeared before the grand jury,” Perry said. “I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.”

U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros told Perry he only learned of the prosecutor’s actions three weeks ago. “No one acted with the intent to mislead your honor, and I think that they were following your order to give the law,” Boutros said. Perry dismissed the charges against the Broadview Six with prejudice and signaled she is considering calling a hearing to discuss possible sanctions for the U.S. attorney’s office over how the case was conducted.

Boutros told reporters that while prosecutors were no longer pursuing the case, the conduct of the protesters was “unacceptable in a civilized society.”

So, masked federal agents indiscriminately rounding people up or fatally shooting people without consequence is fine, but protesting and allegedly breaking a windshield wiper is where Boutros draws the line. These are such unserious people.

Abughazaleh took to social media shortly after the case was dismissed with prejudice, posting a video celebrating with the caption “30 minutes before our charges were dismissed with prejudice. 30 seconds after leaving court.”

“The revelations of the grand jury misconduct that led to the dismissal of the charges is sadly not surprising,” Abughazaleh’s defense attorney, Josh Herman, told reporters. “This misguided case should have never been brought against Kat Abughazaleh or any of her co-defendants for exercising their protected First Amendment rights” to free speech under the U.S. Constitution.

While prosecutorial misconduct derailed this case, federal prosecutors are still pursuing conspiracy charges against a group of protesters in Spokane, Wash. Hopefully, that case has a similar outcome and stalls out the Trump administration’s effort to criminalize the First Amendment.

Charges Against Chicago’s Broadview Six Dismissed With Prejudice was originally published on newsone.com