Federal prosecutors announced plans to drop the felony charge against Oak Park Trustee Brian Straw and the other remaining “Broadview 6” defendants during a status hearing Wednesday morning.
The government will not pursue the felony conspiracy charge that it had indicted Straw and five other anti-ICE protestors on last October. With less than a month left before the expected trial date, the defendants in the high-profile case will now face only misdemeanor impeding an officer charges.
Prosecutors filed an indictment last October alleging that the six 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. Until Wednesday, the government had contended that that action amounted to a criminal conspiracy punishable by years in federal prison.
The Department of Justice decision comes after months of contentious back-and-forth in U.S. Judge April Perry’s downtown courtroom, with the government dropping all charges against two of the six original codefendants in the case back in March as the defense sought to have the case thrown out on First Amendment grounds. The four still charged are Straw, 45th ward Democratic committeeman Michael Rabbit, Katherine “Kat” Abughazaleh, who fell four points shy of winning Illinois’ 9th district congressional primary last month, and Andre Martin, who worked on Abughazaleh’s campaign staff.
It is unclear at this time if the trial will go forward as one joint trial for the defendants or as four individual trials, defense attorneys said. The trial is presently set for Tuesday, May 26.
The government’s move came as a surprise to the defense, according to Straw’s attorney Chris Parente.
“This has been a failure since the beginning when this case was charged,” Parente told reporters. “It again demonstrates to us that this case should never have been brought. It was brought for the wrong reasons, they were never going to be able to prove it at trial and they’ve given up before we even get there. We’ll take the win for right now, but we’re very angry that they even tried to charge it because think about the people between the time that this case was indicted and today that did not go to a protest because they were worried that this office would charge them for just standing there.”
“We don’t know how many people stayed at home because they were worried about being indicted with a bullshit 372 charge by this U.S. Attorney’s Office, and now they’re going to dismiss it at this point.”
While Judge Perry denied the defense’s bid to have the case dismissed during Wednesday’s hearing, the defense vowed to continue seeking a dismissal of the remaining charges in the coming weeks.
The government previously dropped the charges against Catherine “Cat” Sharp, a Chicago aldermanic staffer who gave up on her bid for the Cook County board citing the stress of the prosecution, and Joselyn Walsh, a local musician who was the only defendant in the case that doesn’t have a job in local progressive politics.
The so-called “Broadview 6” are among 32 known defendants to have been charged with nonimmigration crimes tied to Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago’s federal court.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.