Grand jury declines to indict alleged Washington DC sandwich thrower

Grand jurors have rebuffed federal prosecutors by refusing to approve a criminal indictment against a man who allegedly threw a sandwich at a law enforcement agent in protest against Donald Trump’s deployment of armed troops on the streets of Washington DC.

It is the second time in recent days that a grand jury had declined to vote to indict a person accused of assaulting a federal officer and signaled strong public objection to Trump’s decision to send national guard troops and federal agents onto the streets of the US capital, purportedly to crack down on violent crime.

The case of Sean Charles Dunn, who was accused of hurling the sub-style sandwich, became a cause celebre after video of the episode went viral on social media.

Dunn, 37, a former justice department paralegal, was initially charged on 13 August after being accused of throwing a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer who was patrolling an area of Washington’s north-west district known for its bars and restaurants with other agents.

Footage shows a man, presumed to be Dunn, confronting an officer as he stood on the kerbside. He then threw a soft object at point-blank range, hitting the agent in the chest, before running off with the officer and several of his colleagues in pursuit.

The complaint against Dunn states that he stood close to the officer and called him and his colleagues “fascists” and shouted: “I don’t want you in my city.”

After the incident, the Trump administration posted footage of a large group of heavily armed officers going to Dunn’s apartment, heightening the attention the case attracted. Posters depicting Dunn lofting a sandwich have since appeared around the nation’s capital.

It is rare for federal prosecutors to fail to secure charges at a grand jury hearing, given that they control the information that jurors hear and defendants’ lawyers are prohibited from being in the courtroom.

It is unclear if prosecutors will continue to seek to press charges against Dunn, which they could do by withdrawing the felony charge and refiling it as a misdemeanor, which does not need an indictment.

But even that would amount to a symbolic climbdown for the Trump administration, which has demanded that offenses by prosecuted under the most serious federal charges, which carry heavier sentences.

Dunn is due to appear before a magistrate judge on 4 September in a hearing intended to determine whether a crime was committed.

The spurning of the indictment against him mirrors the case of Sidney Lori Reid, against whom federal prosecutors failed three times in 30 days to secure an indictment of a felony assault against an FBI officer, after she was arrested during an immigration protest last month.

Prosecutors on Monday reduced the charges to a low-level misdemeanor, suggesting that they had inflated the accusations against her.

On the same day, a judge dismissed all charges against a man who was arrested last week at a Trader Joe’s store after police alleged he had two handguns in his bag.

Judge Zia M Faruqui said prosecutors had violated Torez Riley’s constitutional rights in charging him, declaring: “Lawlessness cannot come from the government.”

A flurry of defendants have been charged with federal crimes over relatively minor infractions that would normally be handled by local courts, if they resulted in criminal charges at all, since Trump’s highly controversial troop deployment. Critics have condemned the deployment as an attempted military takeover of a city run by the president’s Democratic opponents and motivated by a desire to intimidate rather than to stamp out crime.