After "Broadview Six" case falls apart, U.S. Attorney orders "sweeping" grand jury reforms
Days after dismissing all charges in the "Broadview Six" case due to improper handling of the grand jury proceedings, Chicago U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros announced "sweeping internal reforms" to his office's grand jury practices.
While Boutros' office did not provide specifics on the changes being made, officials said the new procedures "will be more transparent, effective, and impactful while greatly reducing the likelihood of mistakes and errors."
"The important reforms, which took effect yesterday for all grand jury presentations in the Northern District of Illinois, establish clear and unequivocal expectations and rules for federal prosecutors related to grand jury disclosures and the timing of those disclosures," Boutros' office said in a press release. "Among the many changes in the remediation plan are increased and expanded education about grand jury presentations, including extensive, deep-dive training from national experts outside the Office."
In addition, Boutros' office said he and the Justice Department "have also taken swift action related to internal personnel matters."
Boutros himself made a rare appearance in court last week to drop all charges against the four remaining "Broadview Six" defendants - a dramatic final twist to the highest-profile criminal case resulting from the Trump administration's "Operation Midway Blitz" mass deportation campaign last fall in Chicago. The U.S. attorney took responsibility for the actions of the former lead prosecutor on the case, whose behavior in front of the grand jury last fall came to light after Perry reviewed transcripts of the grand jury proceedings.
Perry all but accused Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg of prosecutorial misconduct, saying the transcripts revealed inappropriate "vouching" in which Mecklenburg put "her personal credibility and trustworthiness on the line in support of the charges," the judge said. The prosecutor also apparently asked grand jurors who did not support the government's case to not come back, and allegedly had improper contact with those impaneled outside the grand jury room.
Mecklenburg left the case in February when she took an assignment to represent the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., as counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which Illinois' senior U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin serves as the ranking Democrat. Durbin's office on Friday confirmed Mecklenburg had been terminated from her new job after her alleged prosecutorial misconduct was made public.
The U.S. attorney claimed that he knew about - and took steps to correct - the grand juror dismissals in the fall, but he said he was only informed of the vouching and improper communications with grand jurors late last month. He told Perry that the revelation prompted his late April decision to drop the felony conspiracy charge against the four remaining defendants.
Boutros also said he'd "not seen conduct like that, and it upset me," but defended the remaining two prosecutors against defense attorneys' accusations that the U.S. attorney's office had previously provided a strategically redacted version of grand jury transcripts to the judge in order to hide the prosecutorial misconduct.
Perry called the redactions "the most problematic" of what she found in reading the full transcripts, but Boutros said it was his "very sincere belief" that none of the prosecutors "acted intentionally in misleading you."
Federal prosecutors dropped all charges against two of the "Broadview Six" defendants in March and, in April, dropped the felony conspiracy charge against the remaining four defendants. All remaining charges were dropped last week after the grand jury revelations, and their trial was cancelled.
Late Friday afternoon before the holiday weekend, a court filing indicated the case would be taken over by Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur, a respected career prosecutor best known in recent years for her roles in blockbuster public corruption cases against ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and the "ComEd Four" accused of bribing him, in addition to former Chicago Ald. Ed Burke.
As part of his office's review of the "Broadview Six" case, Boutros has ordered a review of "other grand jury presentations that could have been impacted in a similar fashion."
"The inquiry has included both a root cause analysis into the Office's practices and procedures generally, as well as an exam of any cases by the AUSAs who went into the grand jury in that case that could have been impacted by similar conduct," Boutros' office said.
Boutros also announced defense attorneys in other cases handled by the prosecutors in the "Broadview Six" case will be given "minutes" – or transcripts – of grand jury proceedings in those cases.
"These remediations should also be deeply curative and put to rest once and for all the divergent practices that have existed across the Office for decades, including from one Assistant U.S. Attorney to another as well as from one generation to the next," Boutros said in a statement. "That's because these are clear, bright line rules that everyone must abide by, which should streamline and simplify the decision-making and disclosure process, as opposed to bedevil it. It also should all but eliminate points of contention between federal prosecutor and defense counsel as it relates to these grand jury issues."
