'Broadview Six' Case Dismissed On Grounds Of The Prosecutors Are Malevolent Idiots

The judge sends the prosecutors to bed without supper for the rest of their lives.

We are not lawyers. But we are connoisseurs of dipshits — professional, accomplished dipshits, but dipshits nonetheless — abasing themselves for the God King of all the Realms, Donald Trump.

As such, the end of the case against the Broadview Six is basically our Graceland. It is our Mecca, our Wailing Wall, our whatever the holiest site in Scientology is. It has revealed a cornucopia of poor judgment and bad court-thingie behavior that could keep bar discipline boards busy for the next couple of years.

That’s assuming the Broadview judge, April Perry, pursues sanctions on the prosecutors from the US Attorney’s Office in Chicago who lied to her and tried to hide their bad behavior by not giving her the complete grand jury transcripts she asked for. And based on some of her comments in Thursday’s hearing where she dismissed the remaining misdemeanor charges against the defendants, she will absolutely pursue sanctions against everyone who had even a tiny hand in this fustercluck, up to and including the US Attorney for the district:

The thumbnail version here is this: The prosecutors tried to get a grand jury to indict the defendants — anti-ICE protesters including then-congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh who impeded an ICE vehicle by standing in front of it — on charges of interfering with law enforcement officers during a protest. The AUSA presenting the case allegedly engaged in “vouching,” which is when a prosecutor tells a jury “trust me on this” instead of presenting evidence. It is a big no-no.

Then, when the grand jury did not return an indictment, the prosecutors got rid of the members of the grand jury who refused to indict and tried again. They also communicated with at least one grand juror outside of the court. Also a big no-no!

Then when the judge wanted to review the grand jury transcripts, they hid or redacted some of the pages that would have shown her their bad behavior. A self-evidently huge no-no.

It was bad enough this case was pursued in the first place. Most legal analysts seem to think it was already a dog’s breakfast, an obvious overcharging of people who were protesting ICE outside the Chicago suburb’s concentration ca — er, excuse us, detention facility — last fall, in violation of the defendants’ First Amendment right to protest. It was worse that after dropping the felony charges, the prosecutors were still pursuing the rare step of putting the defendants on trial over misdemeanors. And even after dropping the case, the AUSAs were still slamming the defendants in Thursday’s hearing, which drew a rebuke from the judge.

But to do all that and engage in all sorts of unscrupulous, unethical behavior that involved jerking around the judge and the defense in the apparent hope they wouldn’t notice? And then, when caught, to announce you would drop the charges while still slamming the defendants and complaining that, as one AUSA did, you were new to the office and therefore just a babe in the woods about federal procedures? Hoo boy.

Like, if we were lawyers and we went into court and the judge said this to us regarding our conduct of a case, we would simply leave, walk over to Lake Michigan, tie a cinderblock to our waist, and wade out until the water closed over our heads:

“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. I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.”

Perry spent 12 years as an AUSA — in the office that brought this case, no less — before she became a judge, so this is likely not an exaggeration.

Why the prosecutors thought they would get away with this is beyond us. The explanations we are imagining involve specific intent, whether on their own or due to orders from political higher-ups, to drag this case out and maximize the pain for the defendants who had their lives turned upside-down and are on the hook for large legal bills. And these people for whatever reason — stupidity or partisanship or something else — agreed to do it.

Dragging things out to make it painful for defendants is a tactic prosecutors will, as we understand it, lean on regularly enough. What’s rarer is when the conduct is so egregious and sloppily covered up that the whole thing falls apart under even mild scrutiny.

Or, to put it even more simply: When every lawyer and law professor on BlueSky is reading the transcript of Thursday’s hearing and saying HOLY SHIT WE KNEW IT WAS BAD BUT THIS IS SO MUCH WORSE THAN WE IMAGINED, THESE PEOPLE ARE GETTING SANCTIONED SO HARD THEY MIGHT AS WELL QUIT NOW AND CHOOSE NEW, NON-LEGAL-FIELD-RELATED CAREERS, then you know they done fucked up.

This has been the pattern for the Trump administration ever since it took power 16 months ago: Any protests are met with the most overblown, ridiculous responses, rhetorical and otherwise, in an obvious effort to scare people into shutting up.

A lot of people who care about their integrity and self-worth have quit rather than be a part of it. But so many care more about advancement, so they have not. Thus you have scenes like Thursday’s.

The capacity for Trump to get people to immolate their careers and credibility in pursuit of his goals never fails to astound.

If there is a silver lining, it is that one of the defense lawyers has already announced plans to file a claim with Trump’s new “anti-weaponization” slush fund. So we have the sight of wingnut heads exploding over that to look forward to.

[CBS Chicago]

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