The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee accused two activist organizations in the District on Tuesday of suborning jury nullification, saying they conduct training sessions to help city residents get onto trial juries and vote to acquit the people being prosecuted.
The groups, Free DC and Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, train residents on how to fool prosecutors into letting them serve on a jury and then use that role to “protect our people,” said Rep. James Comer, Kentucky Republican and the committee chairman leading the investigation.
He said the groups may have helped train one of the jurors in the trial that acquitted Sean Dunn, the former Justice Department employee caught on video slinging a submarine sandwich at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer.
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Mr. Comer said urging jurors to enter a trial intending to vote for an acquittal, while concealing that motivation, subverts the right to an impartial jury.
“It is clear that the position of Free DC and Harriet’s Wildest Dreams is that potential jurors should not make decisions impartially based on applying the law as instructed to the facts presented before them in the case, but based on their subjective, personal beliefs and activist agendas,” Mr. Comer said in a statement announcing the investigation.
Harriet’s Wildest Dreams is named after Harriet Tubman and bills itself as a “prison abolitionist” group that works to “undermine” policing, prosecution or incarceration. The group says those are “structures” of “White supremacy, capitalism, xenophobia, ableism and heterosexism.”
Free DC works toward statehood for the District, as well as a full panoply of liberal and far-left causes.
It has been forthcoming in celebrating juries that have refused indictments or returned acquittals in cases brought by the U.S. attorney in the District.
“Jury duty is not just a civic responsibility; it is a powerful tool for ensuring fairness and justice,” Free DC said in a social media post advertising its jury training sessions.
The Washington Times has sought comment from both groups.
Mr. Comer fired off demand letters Tuesday seeking the groups’ training session materials.
“In conducting these trainings, your organization is blatantly facilitating the violation of the constitutional right to an impartial jury and undermining the rule of law in the District,” he wrote to the groups.
His argument that the Constitution guarantees a speedy trial before an impartial jury is accurate, though those rights are generally understood to belong to the accused, not the government.
Mr. Comer’s investigation is based on reporting in The Washington Free Beacon and The Washington Examiner, which reported earlier this year on the training sessions.
The Examiner reported on a July training session in which the organizations strategized about how to “influence outcomes to help create a more equitable legal process.”
During an August session, a Harriet’s Wildest Dreams legal defense coordinator said one of its past trainees was on the jury for Mr. Dunn, the outlet reported.
“You have this superpower, and that superpower is you are able to nullify that godd—- jury,” Qiana Johnson, the trainer, told attendees, according to the newspaper.
Ms. Johnson herself has a record that includes felony theft convictions.
Harriet’s Wildest Dreams said forcing a jury into a deadlock to prevent a conviction is victory enough. It celebrated after a jury was unable to reach a verdict in the bribery case against D.C. Councilmember Trayon White.
“You have more power as a juror than you think,” the group said on social media. “Councilmember Trayon White’s trial is showing us why.”
Juries and grand juries in the District have been a particular hurdle for the Trump Justice Department, which oversees prosecutions in the federal district.
A grand jury refused to indict six Democratic members of Congress this year after they released a video urging members of the military to refuse to carry out unlawful orders.
Last year, a grand jury declined to indict Mr. Dunn on a felony charge, forcing the Justice Department to downgrade the case to a misdemeanor, which he also beat.
Grand juries also declined three times to indict Sidney Lori Reid, who was accused of assaulting an FBI agent while filming an ICE arrest outside the D.C. Jail. After the Justice Department downgraded those charges to a misdemeanor, a jury acquitted her.
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