‘Extremely unusual.’ Grand jurors refuse to indict several in DC. What to know
Federal grand juries refusing to indict someone is rare, according to legal experts, but the phenomenon has repeatedly been seen in Washington, D.C.
Grand jurors in D.C. would not charge a series of defendants with federal felonies in recent weeks, including two charged with threatening President Donald Trump and others accused of assaulting law enforcement.
“It’s extremely, extremely unusual,” Paul Butler, a Georgetown Law professor, MSNBC legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, told McClatchy News in an interview.
One person grand jurors would not indict is Sydney Lori Reid, a D.C. resident who prosecutors said assaulted an FBI agent when she intervened with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers taking someone into custody in D.C. on July 22.
Prosecutors failed to convince grand jurors to indict Reid on three occasions, according to court records.
“They went three times and they never got their indictment,” Butler said. “It’s stunning, it’s kind of seismic in terms of how different it is.”
Mary Graw Leary, a law professor at the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law and a former federal prosecutor, told McClatchy News in an interview that she found it “remarkable that three different grand juries rejected (Reid’s) case.”
“To me that speaks much more to the evidence than to anything else,” she said.
Based on historical context, Leary said “it’s very rare” for prosecutors to not secure an indictment, as the bar is “extraordinarily low.”
In 2010, out of about 162,000 cases prosecuted in federal courts, grand juries did not indict 11 defendants, according to a FiveThirtyEight report published in 2014, citing the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
“I’ve described going in front of a prosecutor as like a spa day, because it’s so easy to get an indictment,” Butler said. “So the fact that these prosecutors are losing, they’re not getting an indictment in a system that’s rigged in their favor, is embarrassing.”
Other defendants not indicted
Leary said it is “unusual” that the recent D.C. cases in which indictments were not secured “were presented to a federal grand jury as felonies.”
Another case involves Sean Charles Dunn, a former Justice Department employee charged with felony assault after he was accused of throwing a sandwich at a Border Patrol officer in northwest D.C. on Aug. 10.
The incident, captured on video, shows the sandwich hitting the officer’s chest.
A federal grand jury on Aug. 27 did not indict him, ABC News reported. Federal prosecutors have now charged him with a misdemeanor, records show.
Dunn’s defense attorney, Sabrina P. Shroff, declined McClatchy News’ request for comment Sept. 5.
To successfully indict Dunn on a felony charge, Butler said “the prosecutor would have to prove that Mr. Dunn intended or attempted to cause a serious bodily injury, that he was either trying to kill the officer or to cause the officer to have serious bodily harm.”
Butler believes prosecutors tried to make an example of him after footage of incident went viral, he said.
“It’s clear that Subway guy was overcharged,” Butler said, referring to Dunn. “It’s clear that Reid was overcharged.”
During law enforcement’s struggle with Reid, the FBI agent she was charged with assaulting was left with a scrape on her hand.
A photo of the injury is included in a statement of facts. Butler said the wound looks like “a couple of cat scratches.”
Like Dunn and Reid, another defendant charged with a felony was Alvin Summers, who was accused of attacking a U.S. Park Police officer after investigators said he tried to drive onto the National Mall on Aug. 15, according to court documents.
His attorney, Mary Manning Petras, wrote in an Aug. 28 filing that a “grand jury returned a no bill” against Summers on Aug. 21.
The same day, the government filed a motion to dismiss his case without prejudice, meaning prosecutors could bring charges against him again.
On Sept. 2, federal public defender Elizabeth Mullin, who represents Edward Dana, a man who was charged with making threats against Trump, confirmed to The Hill that a jury would not indict him.
Dana was caught on video ripping off a light fixture from the wall of a restaurant in northwest D.C. the evening of Aug. 17, according to an affidavit.
After he was taken into custody, the affidavit says he made a series of threatening comments, including “I’m not going to tolerate fascism….And that means killing you, officer, killing the President, killing anyone who stands in the way of our Constitution.”
Mullin did not provide a comment when contacted by McClatchy News on Sept. 5.
A day before a grand jury refused to indict Dana, a grand jury voted against charging New York resident Nathalie Rose Jones in connection with online threats against Trump, The Hill reported.
The U.S. Attorney for D.C., Jeanine Pirro, a former Fox News host, denounced the grand juror’s decision about Jones, according to WUSA-TV, as “the essence of a politicized jury.”
“Instead of the outrage that should be engendered by a specific threat to kill the president, the grand jury in D.C. refuses to even let the judicial process begin,” Pirro said, the outlet reported.
“I think it’s irresponsible to conclude either that these are politicized outcomes that are trying to make a statement,” Leary told McClatchy News.
‘Listen to your ... juries’
WUSA-TV reports D.C. grand juries have declined to indict defendants on nine occasions as of Sept. 4.
Leary said that it seems to her that grand jurors are “likely concluding the facts presented before them do not match up to the charges that they are asked for.”
“I suspect that it’s more reflection on weak evidence going to the grand jury than the grand jury acting outside of its authority,” she added.
Leary also said the failures to secure indictments could be related to the firings of “some of the best and most seasoned prosecutors in the DC US Attorney’s Office.”
“When you get rid of your most seasoned prosecutors, this might be what happens, right? You don’t get people who really know how to effectively manage cases of violence against law enforcement and see the distinctions between an actual threat to a law enforcement officer and something that is less than that,” she said.
The D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office did not return McClatchy News’ request for comment on Sept. 5.
“Maybe these cases have been, I would hope … a lesson that seasoned prosecutors get, which is listen to your grand juries and proceed accordingly,” Leary added.
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