Charges against the remaining members of the “Broadview Six” will be permanently dropped following a closed-door hearing Thursday morning about redactions that were made by prosecutors to a set of grand jury transcripts.
U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros made the announcement just hours after the hearing, as prosecutors and defense attorneys reconvened in U.S. District Judge April Perry’s courtroom at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse.
It puts an end to one of the most contentious cases brought during Operation Midway Blitz, the deportation campaign that rocked the Chicago area last fall.
Perry had called off the trial, set to begin next week, following the hearing earlier Thursday. She announced that news after speaking privately with the lawyers in the case for about 50 minutes. Court staff let members of the public and media back into Perry’s courtroom before she shared the update.
The Chicago Sun-Times, WBEZ, the Chicago Tribune and the Better Government Association intervened in the case Thursday morning, arguing the hearing should take place on the public record. Perry heard from media lawyer Steven Mandell but said, “the interest in guaranteeing a fair jury to these defendants is more compelling than allowing access to this particular proceeding.”
Perry then cleared the courtroom, and court security roped off the area of the hallway nearby for the duration of the closed-door session.
The case is one of the most highly publicized prosecutions to result from Operation Midway Blitz deportation campaign. That’s because it began as a conspiracy case against six people who protested outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in suburban Broadview.
But the feds dropped charges against two of the original six, and then they abandoned the conspiracy charge altogether. Now, four people face one misdemeanor count each of forcibly impeding a federal agent.
Charged are former congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, Oak Park village trustee Brian Straw, 45th Ward Democratic committeeperson Michael Rabbitt and Andre Martin, who served as a member of Abughazaleh’s campaign staff.
The latest charging document in the case, filed April 29, does not offer specific allegations against the defendants. But they’ve generally been accused of joining a larger group of protesters who surrounded an ICE agent’s vehicle and pushed, scratched and otherwise damaged it as it approached the facility in Broadview.
With trial nearing Tuesday, controversy over a set of transcripts from grand jury proceedings seemed to put the case on the rocks. Defense attorneys sought access to transcripts showing how the conspiracy law had been explained to grand jurors.
Judge Perry agreed to look at them on her own.
Grand jury proceedings are generally treated with secrecy, with panels hearing only from prosecutors and their witnesses before deciding whether to hand up an indictment.
Prosecutors wound up redacting portions of the transcripts they gave Perry. She asked them to bring unredacted copies to an April 29 hearing. But moments into it, prosecutors announced they’d be dismissing the conspiracy charge and abandoning the grand jury’s indictment — proceeding with misdemeanor charges in a separate charging document.
Defense attorneys continued to push for their disclosure anyway. Straw attorney Christopher Parente urged Perry during a hearing Monday simply to look at an unredacted version, arguing that prosecutors may be hiding something that “could have tainted all of this.”
Prosecutors said they had no objection, so Perry agreed to take a look. She seemed skeptical at the time, though, telling them “if I had to guess, it seemed like those were probably related to IT issues.”
Two days later, the judge demanded the appearance in her courtroom of “any” prosecutor “who participated in the decision to redact portions” of the transcript, “whether on the trial team or at the supervisory level.”
Perry said she’d hold the hearing under seal to avoid tainting the jury pool, and because grand jury matters would be discussed.
