Something extraordinary is happening in federal courthouses across America: Grand juries are exercising their power to reject criminal charges in high-profile cases, according to Chesa Boudin, the former San Francisco district attorney and Eric Fish a law professor at the University of California, Davis writing in The New York Times.
In
Washington, a grand jury refused to
return a felony indictment against a man who threw a sandwich at a Customs and
Border Protection officer during a crackdown ordered by President Trump. In
Chicago, grand jurors have declined to
indict in several felony cases stemming from a similar operation; prosecutors
seemed to get the message and dismissed additional cases. In
Minnesota, federal prosecutors have charged some demonstrators with
misdemeanors in cases involving encounters with federal agents — and it is very
likely that they did so in some cases because the prosecutors expected grand
juries would reject felony charges.
Federal
grand juries in Virginia twice decided not to indict Letitia James, the New
York attorney general, after a judge dismissed an initial case against her.
Another federal grand jury in Virginia declined at least one charge against
James Comey, the former F.B.I. director; the prosecutor later improperly filed
a version of the indictment the full grand jury never saw.
This week,
a grand jury rejected an
effort by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington to indict the six members of
Congress who appeared last year in a
video underscoring the obligation of service members to refuse illegal
orders.
To read more CLICK HERE
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment