String of embarrassing defeats for prosecutors as experts condemn DoJ effort to cast people as ‘violent perpetrators’
Department of Justice prosecutors across the US have suffered a string of embarrassing defeats in their aggressive pursuit of criminal cases against people accused of “assaulting” and “impeding” federal officers.
In recent months, the federal government has relentlessly prosecuted protesters, government critics, immigrants and others arrested during immigration operations, often accusing them of physically attacking officers or interfering with their duties.
But many of those cases have recently been dismissed or ended in not guilty verdicts.
In several high-profile cases, the prosecutions fell apart because they relied on statements by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers that had no supporting evidence or in some instances were proven by video footage to be blatantly false.
Criminal defense lawyers said it was unusual for federal prosecutors to pursue a high volume of charges over minor clashes with law enforcement, and that it was extraordinary to see the DoJ lose case after case across jurisdictions.
Still, the costs for defendants, even if ultimately exonerated, have been enormous, with many having their mugshots blasted by the government and some forced to languish in jail or have criminal charges hang over them for weeks and months.
The most recent significant fumble came from Minneapolis prosecutors, who last weekdismissed felony assault chargesthey had filed against two Venezuelan menaccusedof “violently beating” an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer “with weapons” on 14 January.
In a press release issued after their arrest, the DHS had described the men as “violent criminal illegal aliens”. The department said officers were conducting a targeted traffic stop to detain an undocumented man from Venezuela, and as he “began to resist and violently assault the officer”, two other men came out of a nearby apartment and “attacked the law enforcement officer with a snow shovel and broom handle”. The officer shot one of them in the leg.
Two of the men were arrested and charged, with a 16 January affidavit providing a vivid account of them attacking an officer identified as ERO 1, referring to ICE’s enforcement and removal operations. But on 12 February, prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss both men’s cases, saying: “Newly discovered evidence in this matter is materially inconsistent with the allegations in the complaint affidavit.”
Source: Drudge Report
