Trump DOJ 'embarrassing' itself as it hits brick wall with jurors

Jeanine Pirro at the 2022 Student Action Summit at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

During Donald Trump's second presidency, his administration official and allies in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) have touted the case against an alleged MS-13 gang member, Moises Rivera-Luna. But that case and others have not gone well for the Trump DOJ, and according to CNN's Katelyn Polantz, a pattern of mistrials and retrials in DOJ's District of Columbia Office shows a major divide between jurors and pro-Trump prosectors.

According to "over two dozen Washington, DC, investigators, former prosecutors, defense attorneys and other legal experts," Polantz reports, "that track record for the U.S. Attorney’s Office" — which is headed by federal prosecutor and Trump ally Jeanine Pirro — "is essentially unheard of in recent memory."

"Before the MS-13 case was re-tried in April, the DC U.S. Attorney's Office had secured convictions in only four of the eight federal cases tried before Washington juries since January," Polantz explains. "Since the MS-13 case's jury hung in April, the U.S. Attorney's Office has tried nearly a dozen more criminal cases in DC's federal court. In two, the defendants were acquitted. Four of the trials ended in deadlock, with jurors reporting in courtroom notes that they deliberated 'hopelessly' and were in complete 'impasse.' Mistrials were declared."

According to Polantz, "Many of the people in the legal community asked not to be named because they practice in the DC federal courthouse or have ties to the U.S. attorney's office ... Several people in Washington's legal community who've interacted with federal jurors say perhaps the juries are politically unhappy with the Trump administration and, thus, take issue with the Justice Department."

CNN interviewees used words like "embarrassing" to describe the sharp divide between jurors and federal prosecutors for DOJ's DC Office.

"While each case at trial where Pirro's office has struggled to convict is different," Polantz explains, "several of the people in the legal community have called the trend with the DC juries in federal court 'embarrassing' or described it as dire. The cases — some being retried weeks or months later — are bogging down a U.S. attorney's office that has already been stretched thin with Trump-prompted firings and departures and sullied by Pirro's political missteps in cases the president has wanted. Many fear how even the office's most experienced prosecutors might fare in trials set for the coming months. That includes the trial to begin this week for an alleged conspirator in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland."

Defense attorney Christopher Davis believes that the meticulous nature of DC juries is a major problem for Pirro's office.

Davis told CNN, "It's just the wheels of justice rolling along. DC juries tend to lean left, and they're highly educated. They take their job seriously. They overturn every stone."

From Your Site Articles