A federal judge in Washington ruled on Thursday that the Justice Department could prosecute a man in federal court using a city grand jury, finding that the District of Columbia’s unusual legal system allowed prosecutors to use the workaround in many other cases, potentially including ones involving serious crimes like sedition and treason.
The decision by Chief Judge James E. Boasberg of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia applied immediately only to Kevontae Stewart, a Washington resident who was indicted in the local District of Columbia Superior Court on a weapons charge in September, but only after a federal grand jury rejected a similar charge.
A federal magistrate judge had called that sequence of events “unprecedented” and refused to accept the indictment in federal court since it had been secured in another court. But Judge Boasberg wrote on Thursday that the magistrate had erred — a ruling that could have far-reaching implications in President Trump’s expansive approach to law enforcement in the nation’s capital.
The decision could potentially allow federal prosecutors to bypass federal grand juries, which are typically reserved for more serious crimes in Washington, at will. It came as federal grand jurors in Washington have repeatedly refused to approve indictments against fellow city residents, amid the president’s aggressive policing surge, a highly unusual pattern.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Trump accused Democrats in Congress of “sedition” for recording a video reminding members of the military that they were not supposed to obey illegal orders. Under Mr. Trump’s direction, prosecutors have also moved to bring the most serious federal charges possible for people arrested in Washington, even over relatively minor offenses.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington is unique because it serves as both the federal prosecutor and, effectively, as the local district attorney for nearly all serious adult crimes.
Judge Boasberg concluded that, on this question, the District of Columbia’s local laws superseded federal procedural rules.
As a result, he ruled that federal magistrate judges must accept indictments properly secured in the local District of Columbia Superior Court, hypothetically on any crime.
Paul Butler, a law professor at Georgetown University, said he thought the U.S. attorney’s Office in Washington would be unlikely to resort to using local grand juries for more serious crimes with any frequency, given that they managed to secure federal indictments in nearly all cases they brought.
Still, he said the decision gave them the option, expanding their possible paths to indictment and conviction in the nation’s capital. And he said that because local grand juries tended to hear many more cases than federal ones and to spend less time on each, they were more likely to return indictments.
“That is a concern, especially now that it’s been blessed by Judge Boasberg,” he said.
In Mr. Stewart’s case, prosecutors decided to try the tactic rather than try again with a new federal grand jury. When they secured an indictment from a local grand jury, they returned to federal court to present it to Zia M. Faruqui, a federal magistrate judge.
But Judge Faruqui refused to accept the local indictment, rejecting the tactic as a calculated sleight of hand. Prosecutors then appealed to Judge Boasberg, demanding he intervene as the court’s chief judge. Their request came despite the fact that Judge Boasberg had, in other settings, ruled against the Trump administration, earning him the ire of Mr. Trump and his allies.
At the time, Judge Boasberg chided prosecutors, including Jonathan Hornok, the head of the criminal division of the U.S. attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, urging them to “take the temperature down.” He counseled both prosecutors and Judge Faruqui, who had exchanged heated accusations about one anothers’ intentions, to try revisit the question.
But Judge Faruqui, who once worked as a prosecutor in the office, refused to reconsider his decision, sending the case back to Judge Boasberg for a resolution.
In his opinion, Judge Boasberg stressed that Judge Faruqui had good reason to demand that federal prosecutors follow normal rules. He wrote that under the typical rules of criminal procedure, Judge Faruqui might consider the indictment from a local court as no more valid than one “returned from a court in Sweden.”
But he found that D.C.’s unique law created a specific exception, allowing indictments from both federal and local grand juries.
As a result, Judge Boasberg wrote that the government could go to the local court with much more serious cases, including murder, treason or racketeering cases, “and other crimes thought to be reserved for the federal courts.” He added that the government could choose to “circumvent the federal grand jury altogether” and “decide it will never take a case to a federal grand jury.”
He said he found those possibilities “troubling.” But he added that it would fall to Congress, which has wide authority in the federal district, to change the law if it wished, and that judges could not intervene.
Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the federal courts, including the legal disputes over the Trump administration’s agenda.
The post Judge Concludes Prosecutors Can Circumvent Federal Grand Juries in D.C. appeared first on New York Times.
