In August, President Donald Trump took over the police force in Washington, D.C., and flooded the city with officers from various federal agencies. As part of this show of force, federal agents arrested hundreds of people, while prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia—led by interim U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro—seemingly intended to throw the book at them, whether or not the punishment actually fit the crime.
This week, one of the administration’s more high-profile cases crashed and burned at trial.
In July, according to a charging document, D.C. resident Sydney Reid filmed with her phone as agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) took two people into custody from the city jail. When one ICE officer told Reid to move back, she “continued to move closer to the officers and continued to record the arrest.” When she didn’t reply to further commands, an officer pushed her against the wall, and FBI Agent Eugenia Bates stepped in to assist as Reid “was flailing her arms and kicking and had to be pinned against a cement wall.” During the scuffle, the indictment claims Reid “forcefully pushed [Bates’] hand against the cement wall” and “caused lacerations,” and it includes a picture of her hand with two red marks.
Reid was arrested for “assaulting, resisting, or impeding” federal officers, a felony punishable by up to eight years in prison. But when prosecutors presented the case, a grand jury declined to indict—not once or even twice, but three separate times.
This is not unique to Reid: In August, the same month, prosecutors also failed to secure a grand jury indictment against Sean Dunn, the Department of Justice employee who threw a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer stationed in D.C. In fact, within three weeks of Trump’s D.C. takeover, grand juries declined to return indictments at least seven times.
After failing to secure an indictment within 30 days, as required by law, prosecutors refiled Reid’s case as a misdemeanor. This week, after a three-day trial, a jury deliberated for less than two hours before acquitting Reid of the misdemeanor charge.
The case was troubled from the start. “Nearly a dozen people in the federal jury pool said they couldn’t be impartial in the case because of their feelings,” CNN reported. One said she couldn’t be impartial about immigration officials because “Just last month…my cousin and my aunt were taken from me.”
At an evidentiary hearing in August, a government witness claimed there was no video of the incident in question because the jail’s cameras weren’t working at the time. But on Monday, the night before the trial, federal officials suddenly turned over two videos of the altercation that they had previously claimed didn’t exist.
“Either your agent lied, or [the D.C. Department of Corrections] lied, or someone was sloppy,” U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan told prosecutors.
The prosecution alleged that during the scuffle, when asked to calm down, Reid “continued to resist and instead began raising up her leg as if preparing to strike the
agents with her knee”—which would constitute simple assault, even though she did not actually make contact.
Reid said she was present when an officer “viewed a video of the incident, captured by cellphone,” and “the angle of the video shows that the knee was not directed at any law enforcement officer but was a reactive movement.” But when her attorneys requested a copy of that video, officials said it was posted on social media, and the link was now dead. They also noted that even though multiple agents at the scene wore body cameras, those cameras were either turned off or had dead batteries.
In September, Sooknanan granted the defense’s request to include as evidence text messages that Bates sent to another officer after the incident, in which she called her injuries “boo boos” and referred to Reid as a “lib tard.”
Then at trial, during cross-examination of Bates, Reid’s attorney realized a text was missing from what Bates submitted as evidence. “That seems to be a common theme with all your witnesses,” Sooknanan asked the prosecutor. “Did they lie, or did they continuously make mistakes?”
“This verdict shows that this administration and their peons are not able to invoke fear in all citizens,” Reid said in a scorching statement after the verdict. “I feel sorry for the prosecutors really, who must be burdened by Trump’s irrational and unfounded hatred for his fellow man. He’s a crazy person who’s in charge of the most powerful nation.”
“This case is a warning from the Department of Justice that they will have the backs of ICE goons, even when three grand juries reject their baseless charging decisions,” added Reid’s attorneys. “The Department of Justice can continue to take these cases to trial to suppress dissent and to try and intimidate people. But in the end, as long as we have a jury system, our citizens will continue to rebuke the DOJ through speedy acquittals.”
