Brian Straw, an Oak Park village trustee, recalled standing with fellow youth baseball parent and attorney Chris Parente at a ball game a year ago.
At one point, Straw said, he asked Parente for his cell number, “just in case” he ever needed it. He said Parente replied, “I think you’re being a little paranoid.”
“This guy’s never going to get in trouble,” Parente recalled thinking. But last October, after participating in a protest outside the Broadview ICE detention facility during September, Straw found himself in genuine trouble. He thought the phone call from the FBI was a prank or a scam, until they emailed him the indictment.
He was suddenly part of what came to be called the Broadview 6.
Straw and Parente would find themselves front and center in a riveting drama that unfolded over the next seven months. As Chicago, and eventually the nation and the world watched, the prosecution of the so-called Broadview 6 roll out to great fanfare, and then slowly unraveled as the defense took the fight to prosecutors.
On June 25, Straw joined Parente and moderator Charlie Meyerson for a discussion in a packed room at the 19th Century Club. The event was sponsored by Wednesday Journal.
Straw shared both his thoughts and feelings as Meyerson guided him and Parente through a review of events.
“I have never felt so under the microscope of the state,” Straw said of that September day in Broadview. “Cameras in every direction, multiple helicopters overhead. We were shot with pepperball rounds, and baton rounds, and they tear gassed us.
“I couldn’t stop crying most of that day,” he said. His fear and dismay only deepened when he later read a government press release describing “200 violent rioters” at the Broadview protest.
“We’re in a moment where we can’t trust the federal government,” Straw said. “That’s a scary moment for us to be in.”
Straw, an attorney, stressed the indictment of the Broadview 6 was an assault on not just 1st Amendment rights of free speech, but the 5th Amendment right to assemble peacefully and protest the government.
“We’re painted as being not truly patriotic if (we’re) on the (political) left,” Straw said, making the argument that defending the Constitution is patriotic.
Straw said the fear he experienced is the point of it all. The federal government is using criminal indictments as a warning to others not to show up at civil protests. It is, he suggested, about “the other,” that is, other groups that threaten the peace.
But Straw is not among any group that can be characterized as “the other,” who are demonized by the American right wing. Not brown or black or poor or criminal or an immigrant or any other type. None of the Broadview Six are the sort of marginalized individuals some seek to vilify and blame for society’s problems.
Straw is reflective — in appearance, at least — of the once upon a time political and legal power structure: white, male, married with children, a church goer, a local elected official.
“I’m a white lawyer from Oak Park,” Straw said. “It’s about those people who can’t make the argument I can make.” He made it clear that his commitment to serving others does not end at Oak Park’s border or exclude others who are superficially different from him.
“I think it’s an extension of my responsibilities,” Straw said. “I don’t just serve homeowners, I serve everyone, who lives in Oak Park and who passes through Oak Park. They are constituents too.”
“They truly picked the wrong person when they picked Brian,” Parente said. “He’s got a hat that literally says, ‘Do Good.’ That is not somebody out there to injure an ICE agent.”
“It’s been about revealing how flawed the process was,” Parente said. “That 5th Amendment right we’ve taken for granted has been repeatedly violated for the last year in Northern Illinois.”
“We don’t spend a lot of time talking about the right of assembly,” Straw said. “This conspiracy charge was a violation of our right of assembly.”
In late spring the Department of Justice’s case unravelled and all charges were finally dropped.
“How did it feel to have the charges dropped,” Meyerson asked Straw.
“It was a relief,” he acknowledged. “But it never felt like the end of the line.”
While there was never any question that he would fight the charges at trial and win, he found himself at a crossroads once the charges were dropped.
“We got the charges dismissed, and we could have said ‘We won’ (and walked away),” Straw said. Instead, he said, “I had a glass of champagne, and then I said, ‘We have to go after them.’”
The tables began turning on May 18, when Judge April Perry finally granted defense requests that she review the grand jury transcripts.
“Chris did a fantastic job of being such a nuisance that the judge finally said, ‘Fine, I’ll do it,’” said Straw.
Perry surmised at the time that the redactions were likely due to IT issues. They weren’t, and there weren’t just 30 pages with redactions, as prosecutors claimed.
“It was 215 pages,” Straw said. It also was clear why prosecutors had redacted so extensively; the misconduct was extensive.
Grand jurors who questioned the feds’ case were excused from the jury, and prosecutors improperly “vouched” — that is, put their personal credibility behind the indictment, rather than the evidence. And on at least two occasions, a prosecutor spoke with grand jurors outside of the jury room.
“That was the crack in the dam,” Parente said. “Getting the judge to look at the transcripts.”
“How did you know?” Meyerson asked of Parente’s initial concern about improper conduct with the grand jury. Parente said he initially suspected an honest mistake was involved.
“In the 160-year history of the (Northern Illinois) district, they’ve never used this law,” he said. “I felt there was going to be a mistake in how they explained the law.”
“Then there’s the way they turned over redacted transcripts,” he said. “You never redact stuff going to the judge.”
Straw said prosecutor William Hogan kept the option of dropping the conspiracy charge “in his back pocket.” When it appeared Perry would review the unredacted transcripts, Hogan moved to drop the felony conspiracy charge.
“That’s when we knew there had to be something really bad in those transcripts,” Straw said. “The reason we kept going was the cover-up.”
“This administration is trying to scare you, so you won’t go to a Broadview protest,” Straw said. “(So) you won’t blow a whistle when ICE agents are on your block.”
At one point the protest group Antifa, which is a label and not an actual organization, came up in the discussion. Antifa, which simply means “anti-fascist,” has been demonized on the right as violent and seditious, and targeted for criminal prosecution.
“I’m Antifa!” a woman in the audience at the event called out, adding, “Anyone else?”
Parente, who spent 14 years as a federal prosecutor, said that in his handling of more than 100 indictments, “I never had a ‘No true bill.’ That is incredible. (Grand juries) almost never say no.”
He expressed sadness and concern at the manner in which some law enforcement and prosecutors are conducting themselves. He said he wants his children to support law enforcement but not blindly.
“I want them to grow up respecting law enforcement but also questioning law enforcement,” Parente said. “The FBI, the DEA (and others) — those people do good work.”
Parente said it hasn’t been easy criticizing people who he considers friends, including both US Attorney for Northern Illinois Andrew Boutros and ASUA Sheri Mecklenburg.
“It makes me so sad to see what (Boutros) has done to the office,” Parente said. “These people are not doing the job the way it should be done. They’re just charging ahead.”
“When you get that close to power, I think you do things the Andrew Boutros I know wouldn’t have done.”
Parente and others have filed a motion asking Judge Perry to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the alleged misconduct by Boutros, Mecklenburg, Hogan and others. A ruling on the motion isn’t expected until late July or August.
Both men agreed there should be changes to the system allowing stronger judicial oversight of grand jury proceedings.
“I do think that a judge, as a matter of course, should have access to grand jury transcripts,” Straw said. “We almost didn’t get those grand jury transcripts. They almost got away with it, they really did. We were ready to go to trial.”
Parente said grand jury reforms “are definitely something that can be taken out of this.”
“We definitely need something,” he said. “For the deterrent value, knowing that someone is going to be looking at this.”
Straw acknowledged several people in the room who he said he saw in court, silently supporting him. “This community stood beside me and stood behind me. It wasn’t just to get myself off, but to fight for bigger issues.”
Straw also thanked the many people who donated to his legal defense fund, including Oak Park’s State Senator Don Harmon. He said he intends to return larger donations to the donors and give the rest to “non-profit organizations working for rights issues.”
Asked who he thought should portray him “in the movie,” Straw focused the attention on others.
“If this were to be made into a movie, one of the group of heroes was a grand jury that was trying to fight against a ridiculous case brought by the prosecution,” he said. He suggested a remake of the classic film “12 Angry Men.”
“These were men and women from across the Chicago area that took their job seriously,” Straw said. “It takes some real courage to tell an AUSA that you believe their case is a crock of shit.”
But no law or legal system can protect people who cannot or will not stand up for their rights.
“Courage isn’t a lack of fear, courage is standing up despite the fear,” Straw said. “What we’ve shown here is that when people stand fast and fight, they win.”