Nearly four months after his federal indictment, there’s a date set for Oak Park Trustee Brian Straw’s trial.
U.S. Judge April Perry set Monday, May 26 as the trial start date in the federal conspiracy case that emerged from Straw and his five co-defendants participation in a protest at the Broadview ICE Detention Facility last fall. The jury trial in the case is expected to last at least a week, attorneys said in court last month.
Straw is one of several progressive political figures facing a felony conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer charge in connection with a confrontation between anti-ICE protestors and a vehicle driven by a federal law enforcement agent during an early morning protest outside the Broadview ICE Detention Facility last September, according to U.S. Northern District of Illinois court documents. Straw’s co-defendants in the case are 9th District U.S. Congressional candidate Katherine “Kat” Abughazaleh, Chicago alderman staffer Catherine “Cat” Sharp, 45th ward Democratic committeeman Michael Rabbit, musician Joselyn Walsh and Andre Martin, who works on Abughazaleh’s campaign staff.
The indictment alleged that Straw and his co-defendants were among a crowd of protestors who blocked, pushed against and banged on a vehicle being driven by a federal agent into ICE’s Broadview Detention Facility the morning of Sept. 26. The prosecution said a side mirror and a windshield wiper on the agent’s vehicle was damaged in the incident and the car was vandalized, but none of the indicted individuals are alleged to have directly caused the damage themselves.
The so-called “Broadview Six” are among 32 known defendants to have been charged with nonimmigration crimes tied to Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago’s federal court, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Joshua Herman, attorney for Abughazaleh, said last month that the defense has pushed for as quick a trial date as possible with the hopes of giving their clients as quick a return to their regular lives and work as possible. Sharp recently dropped her bid for a Cook County board seat, citing the mounting stress of the case.
The defense said they are also seeking a speedy trial in light of the tense climate surrounding federal immigration agents’ interactions with protestors and activists, intensified by the recent killings of activists Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis last month, Herman said.
“We want to bring this case to trial sooner because of everything happening in our country right now with DHS,” Herman said. “What this case would ultimately do is expose one more overreach: the misuse of this conspiracy statute against demonstrators exercising their first amendment rights. We’re all on the same page of if we can’t get this case dismissed, which we think it should be, we’re going to take it to trial.”
Straw’s attorney Chris Parente told reporters after a hearing in January that the prosecution is a waste of the Justice Department’s time and that the government is trying to invent a criminal conspiracy case out of people simply taking part in the same protest without prior coordination.
“That is an attempt by this administration, and potentially this U.S. Attorney’s office, to silence legitimate peaceful protest,” said Parente, who is an Oak Park resident. “The government will acknowledge that none of the six people charged did any of the damage they’re claiming. There’s no allegation against these six, it was other people at the protest.”
Attorneys for the defense also invoked the unrest playing out in Minneapolis as reason why the case materials are of significant public interest.
“You don’t have to look farther than the past two-and-a-half weeks of news to know that this is important to the public,” said Terence Campbell, the attorney for Martin. “How federal law enforcement officers, from ICE and Homeland Security, are behaving and acting and whether they are instigators.”.
Defense attorneys are still expected to file motions ahead of the trial in attempts to get the case dismissed ahead of this spring’s trial date on first amendment and selective prosecution grounds.