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submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

A grand jury declined for a third time to indict a D.C. woman accused of assaulting an FBI agent during an inmate swap with ICE – a rare loss for federal prosecutors that could foreshadow further trouble if the case goes to trial.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office said in a filing Monday it would move ahead with charging Sidney Lori Reid with a misdemeanor for the alleged assault outside the D.C. Jail in July. A magistrate judge had given prosecutors until Monday afternoon to secure an indictment against Reid or see the felony version of the assault charge dismissed.

A grand jury declining to indict three times on the same case is a warning the evidence may not stand up at trial, according to attorney Christopher Macchiaroli, a partner at Silverman Thompson Slutkin White who previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the federal prosecutor’s office in D.C.

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[-] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 35 points 17 hours ago

A grand jury declining to indict three times on the same case is a warning

It's a warning that the fucking ham sandwich is INNOCENT!!!

[-] Sprocketfree@sh.itjust.works 16 points 16 hours ago

Gonna be real funny when federal prosecutors get zero convictions because the American public knows they are fascist fucks.

[-] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 5 points 5 hours ago

That's why due process is one of their targets.

[-] HulkSmashBurgers@reddthat.com 32 points 21 hours ago
[-] Makhno@lemmy.world 12 points 18 hours ago

All a fascist needs to suck is the barrel of a gun

[-] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 71 points 1 day ago

When I was on a grand jury a couple years back, every one of those assholes voted to indict on every single charge. Even the guy who was sleeping voted to indict. I suggested maybe we don't participate in sending people to jail for marijuana, and they all looked at me like I was a crazy person.

Yeah, the old joke among lawyers is that a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich for murder if the prosecutor wanted them to.

For the unaware, there is no defense at the grand jury, because the person hasn’t been accused of a crime yet. The grand jury is when the prosecutor lays out the evidence and basically asks “do I have enough to actually charge them with a crime?”

But the key factor is that the prosecutor has full discretion in what evidence they show. They can present evidence that isn’t admissible in court. They can present evidence that they know was fabricated. They can exclude exculpatory evidence that would prove the person’s innocence. Hell, the prosecutor could just scribble a quick “lmao yeah I did it. Signed, [suspect]” on a napkin and present it as evidence. And there’s no defense lawyer, because the suspect hasn’t been charged with a crime yet. If the prosecutor wants the grand jury to indict, the grand jury will functionally always do so.

And the inverse is true too. If they don’t want to press charges on someone, (for instance, a cop in a high profile case), then they can just refuse to bring any evidence for the grand jury. The grand jury is only allowed to rule based on the evidence that was presented. If a cop strangles a black dude on the street while dropping N-words left and right, and surrounded by cameras? The grand jury won’t be allowed to use any of that evidence unless the prosecutor presents it. Prosecutors often use this to avoid pressing charges, by refusing to bring any evidence. Then they jump in front of the news cameras and cry about how they tried to prosecute, but the mean grand jury refused to indict. But vote for me, because the public wanted it and I tried! Since the members are kept secret, blaming the faceless grand jury is an easy out for prosecutors.

And that’s a large part of what makes this specific case so interesting. They’re going to charge the person even after the grand jury refused to indict multiple times. And again, getting an indictment is laughably easy. This means the grand jury is either rebelling despite the evidence, or truly doesn’t believe any of the evidence that the prosecutor has presented.

[-] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 hours ago

They can present evidence that isn’t admissible in court. They can present evidence that they know was fabricated.

Source? I know they can hide evidence, but bringing up inadmissible evidence?

[-] SoleInvictus 10 points 17 hours ago

Thanks for this write up. I had no idea. The US justice system is such a mess.

[-] GeeDubHayduke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 16 hours ago

There's no justice system here. There is a legal system, but no justice system.

[-] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 24 points 22 hours ago

Prosecutors often use this to avoid pressing charges, by refusing to bring any evidence. Then they jump in front of the news cameras and cry about how they tried to prosecute, but the mean grand jury refused to indict. But vote for me, because the public wanted it and I tried! Since the members are kept secret, blaming the faceless grand jury is an easy out for prosecutors.

I think more people should know this. We know that ACAB but prosecutors seem like they're happy to lie down with dogs.

[-] memfree@piefed.social 203 points 1 day ago

Let this be a reminder to all called to jury duty (grand or otherwise) that you do not have to convict.

Reid was arrested in July for allegedly resisting attempts to restrain her after she refused to back away from ICE officers who were conducting arrests outside the D.C. Jail. In the process, they said, an FBI agent received scrapes to the back of her hand.

and:

Reid’s attorneys, assistant federal public defenders Tezira Abe and Eugene Ohm, say she was arrested by officers who didn’t want to be filmed. Video evidence presented during a preliminary hearing captured an ICE officer telling Reid during her arrest, “You should have just stayed home and minded your business.”

Lady is trying to film. Legal. An agent gets scrapes while trying to stop her. Lady is charged with "an enhanced felony version of an assault charge that requires inflicting bodily injury on a federal officer and carries up to eight years in prison."

Say NO.

[-] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 11 points 18 hours ago

Imagine that room. The Prosecutors are doing their best to paint this woman as an out-of-control, rabid beast, while the entire room is looking at him with their arms crossed, a smirk on every single face.

And then they do it two more times, with the same result.

That job sucks.

[-] jonne@infosec.pub 56 points 1 day ago

And grand juries are famously easy to persuade, as this is just the prosecutor and whatever evidence they choose to present, there's no defence lawyer involved. The case is either ridiculously thin, or the prosecutor just doesn't know how to do their job.

[-] Cenzorrll@lemmy.world 7 points 16 hours ago

I was on a grand jury and yeah, it's basically prosecutor/cop saying "they did crime" and as a member of the jury it's your job to decide "is maybe possibly a crime did" so really you have zero information as to what happened, just a "trust me bro". So the fact that this got shut down AT ALL is screaming Incompetent prosecutor, very competent prosecutor who knows its horseshit, thinnest case to ever be cased, or (incredibly unlikely) a grand jury who knows their shit.

[-] jacksilver@lemmy.world 33 points 1 day ago

Since grand juries are also usually local, it's also possible that they've pissed off enough people around DC that any case involving ICE won't go through.

[-] DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

Honestly, this is so rare it makes me wonder if the prosecutor really wants to indict the woman. We have seen prosecutors using grand juries to not indict (cops) without accepting responsibility for it before. May be a prosecutor with some morals but under great pressure to support ICE.

Of course also possible that people can finally see through what is happening and are not buying the BS.

[-] frongt@lemmy.zip 22 points 1 day ago
[-] jonne@infosec.pub 7 points 1 day ago

Not improbable, true.

[-] ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world 51 points 1 day ago

So can they just keep forming grand juries until one gives them the result they want or is it a three strikes kind of thing? Halfway sarcastic here

[-] Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca 10 points 21 hours ago

Is Jury nullification in play here too?

[-] frezik 84 points 1 day ago

Jesus. You can get a grand jury to indict on anything. If you tried three times and failed, then maybe find a new line of work.

[-] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 64 points 1 day ago

Yeah, the three times part is really alarming. Once if they fail to indict, you might go back a second time with reduced charges. Three times on the same charge is a sign of authoritarianism.

[-] dhork@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago

If you tried three times and failed, then maybe find a new line of work.

Remember that Trump picked the current US Attorney in DC based on her stellar track record running her own Fox News legal analysis show. She is at least more qualified than many of his other picks, though: she was an actual DA and judge before becoming a TV pundit.

She doesn't have to find a new line of work because the President has her back, as long as she keeps attacking his perceived enemies. Expect Trump to complain about how grand juries are "woke" and need to be eliminated.

[-] jacksilver@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

I'm wondering if it's more the people than the prosecutor.

DC isn't happy with how it's being treated, not sure why a grand jury would side with ICE. Jury nullification starts at the grand jury.

[-] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 43 points 1 day ago

Incredible how just a little bit of due process scrutiny makes fascist bullshit fall apart completely

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 8 points 23 hours ago

We'll see how long that lasts. It has only been 7 months.

[-] thedruid@lemmy.world 59 points 1 day ago

They're gonna lose because Ice has no jurisdiction over citizens. Fill stop.

Do not comply.

[-] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 61 points 1 day ago

They don't have to win to win. They just have to keep you afraid, and prove they are willing to wring citizens through the legal machinery designed to break and bankrupt poor people.

And then sometimes they do win, and the cage gets a little bit smaller.

[-] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 39 points 1 day ago

"You can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride" seems to be this administration's working motto.

Sure, you can have the "law" on your side, and it wouldn't matter one iota when you're getting shanked in some cell in El Salvador or Uganda. The bad guys win anyway. At worst for them you come back, no skin off their backs.

[-] thedruid@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

Fasicism always fails. May take awhile. But if does. Takes people with courage. Most generations dont have enough on their own. Each one has less people willing to endure hardships for greatness and freedom and, they become more more in pablum, and state backed entertainment

[-] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Fascism in Portugal lasted from 1933 to 1974.

In Spain it lasted from 1936 to 1975.

Fascism did fail (specifically, in Portugal there was a Revolution and in Spain the Fascists just gave power away whilst keeping their loot) but it took about 50 years in both cases.

Had Hitler and Mussolini not gone to war with basically most of the World, I wouldn't be at all surprised if their regimes hadn't lasted until well after both died (which was what happened in both Portugal and Spain - those regimes only fell a while after after Salazar and Franco were dead).

Meanwhile just to give you an idea of how bad things can be under Fascism without people rebelling, Portugal during the Fascist days was a dirt poor country with mainly subsistence agriculture which even received Food Aid from the rest of Europe and this without even having gone through a war. Just a reminder that during the Age of the Discoveries, both Portugal and Spain were for a while (about a century) the pinnacle powers in the World to the point that they divided it in half between themselves (which is why in South America Brasil speaks Portuguese and the rest speak Spanish and why most Portuguese "colonies" were in Africa whilst Spain was mostly present in South America), so it's not as if those weren't rich countries at some point.

So, yeah, you're right that Fascism always falls (then again, so does everything else), but it can take a while to get there and entire generations can suffer horribly before things change.

[-] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

Had Hitler and Mussolini not gone to war with basically most of the World, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if their regimes hadn’t lasted until well after both died

This is all what if stuff, but it's worth noting that Hitler basically financed Germany's reconstruction (and more importantly Germany's rearmament) by borrowing heavily, notably from Jewish financiers and from the Soviet Union (a nearly unknown aspect of the non-aggression treaties between Germany and the USSR was an enormous loan). Had Hitler not opted for war and genocide like he did, he would have faced other major problems such as the collapse of his entire economy (The Wages of Destruction is an excellent read on this subject).

Another fun fact about the non-aggression treaties was that ironically enough they included military technology transfers from Germany to the Soviets. For the most part, none of the stuff Germany handed over to Russia resulted in anything significant - with a noteworthy exception being some advanced 37mm antiaircraft turrets that had been earmarked for installation on the Bismarck, the battleship that was rather famously crippled by fucking biplanes.

[-] vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 hours ago

Yeah it's kinda a subset i of the old "how could the Germans win WW2? By not being Nazis." joke. The German economy was already starting to struggle as early as the annexation of Austria and may have very well collapsed if they had been denied Czechoslovakia, there's a reason they were basically looting everywhere they invaded rather than just taking over the factories.

Also in the defense of the Bismark having more AA wouldn't have helped, the reason they didn't do well against the swordfish naval biplanes is because they didn't have the right ammo and their guns weren't calibrated for planes that slow they were calibrated for planes like the spitfires naval sub model. It'd be like some dude in a with a ballistic plate getting shit canned by a blunderbuss, under no circumstances did the engineers consider that a viable risk.

[-] thedruid@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago

Because there are two few people who have the courage.

It's not about numbers or weapons. It's about fear. Being afraid is normal

Question is, how does one want to be remembered and deal with it?

[-] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

I'm in my 40's. I'm not changing jack shit, and these thugs aren't going anywhere in the next two decades.

This battle is well and truly lost. I know "hope" is important but take a fucking look out of the window. Evil prevails, everywhere in the world simultaneously. "Good" people are at an automatic disadvantage by virtue of giving a shit about anything other than themselves. The game is rigged and has been for a long time. They've just stopped caring about the veneer that was on top of the ugly truth.

Sociopathy is the name of the game, and you can only beat them by playing by their rules.

[-] thedruid@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Like I said, youngster.

[-] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 36 points 1 day ago

"If you watch the video closely you can see where Reid assaults the FBI agents fist with her face. "

[-] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 1 day ago

There is a saying that a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich.

The fact that the prosecutor couldn't get an indictment not once but thrice is damning.

[-] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago

Is this not double jeopardy?

[-] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 23 hours ago

Nope, because they haven’t officially charged the person with a crime until the indictment happens. The grand jury has refused to indict multiple times, meaning the person hasn’t officially been charged with a crime yet.

[-] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 15 points 23 hours ago

So just harassment then. Cool cool cool.

[-] jaxxed@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

I'm sorry, but I still chocked at "US attorney J. PIRRO"

[-] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

They'll just keep shopping juries until they find one that complies.

[-] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago

This isn't even an actual trial jury. Grand Juries are basically just to confirm the prosecution has a minimum amount of evidence to bother with a trial.

Three separate sets of people have decided there's basically no evidence for what they want to charge.

this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025
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