For the third time in slightly more than a week, grand jurors in Washington have rejected efforts by federal prosecutors to obtain an indictment against a resident accused of a felony assault against a federal agent.
The pattern of failure — in what was now three separate cases — suggested that something extraordinary was taking place in the city’s federal courts. It indicated that the ordinary people called upon to sit on grand juries were pushing back against efforts by prosecutors to harshly charge fellow citizens who had encountered law enforcement officers on the streets at a moment when President Trump had flooded them with National Guard troops and federal agents.
While all three rejections came in cases being heard in Federal District Court in Washington, it was unclear if they had been presented to the same grand jury. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, which had brought each of the cases, did not respond to a message seeking comment.
It is highly unusual for prosecutors to fail to obtain an indictment from grand jurors given that they are in almost complete control of the grand jury process. But the fact that grand juries have now rejected indictments against three separate defendants accused of assaulting federal agents — in some incidents that were clearly captured on video — was all but unheard-of.
Something similar, and equally extraordinary, happened in Los Angeles last month as federal prosecutors struggled to obtain indictments against protesters arrested during demonstrations against federal immigration actions.
Crime has fallen in Washington since federal agents started policing the streets in large numbers, according to a review by The New York Times. The surge, however, has chafed against some residents who have found the presence of troops and agents to be a cause of fear, not of security.
But the recent spate of grand jury failures suggested something different, said Alan Z. Rozenshtein, a former Justice Department official who teaches at the University of Minnesota Law School: a systemic erosion of trust among grand jurors in the city who have been given the important task of indicting — or not indicting — their fellow residents.
“When you see multiple failed indictments like this, it indicates either that the government is bringing extraordinarily weak cases,” he said, “or that there is some kind of jury nullification or show of discretion by grand jurors is taking place.”
The most recent failure to indict came in the case of a man named Alvin Summers, who was arrested on Aug. 15 after a U.S. Park Police officer pulled him over in his white Ford Bronco near the National Mall.
According to a criminal complaint, Mr. Summers began to “speed walk” away from the officer after stepping out of the vehicle. When she caught up with Mr. Summers and sought to place him in handcuffs, the complaint asserted, he swung his arms and grabbed her upper body, bringing both of them to the ground.
Mr. Summers then fled up 12th Street SW and was seen tossing an object just before he was detained by members of the National Guard. The authorities ultimately determined that the object he threw was a vial of PCP.
In court papers filed on Thursday, Mr. Summers’s lawyers revealed that prosecutors had taken his case to a grand jury on Aug. 21 and came out empty-handed, unable to obtain an indictment.
On Wednesday, the papers said, prosecutors notified the lawyers that they had not tried to re-present his case to a grand jury. And instead of downgrading the charges from felony to misdemeanor assault, the papers said, the prosecutors filed a motion to have the case dismissed — albeit without prejudice, a move that would allow them to refile charges at a later date.
Mr. Summers’s lawyers have opposed that move and have asked Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya to throw out the case with prejudice, meaning that charges cannot be refiled.
Given the grand jury’s decision, Mr. Summers “should not be forced to live under the threat of later charges and rearrest,” the lawyers wrote. “The charges against Mr. Summers were based on an allegation made by one officer who was wearing a body-worn camera. That officer’s testimony was rejected by the grand jury, presumably after reviewing the body-worn camera video.”
Prosecutors have taken a different path in two other recent cases in which grand juries have failed to indict.
On Thursday evening, they reduced the charges they had brought two weeks ago against a man who threw a sandwich at a federal officer on the streets, refiling his case as a misdemeanor after failing to indict him on a felony assault count.
On Monday, they did the same in the case of a woman accused of assaulting an F.B.I. agent during a protest against immigration officials last month at the local jail in Washington.
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
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