The Justice Department is facing an unprecedented crisis of confidence in its handling of grand jury proceedings, with federal judges striking down cases and citing prosecutorial misconduct at levels legal experts say were virtually unthinkable just years ago.
In a striking rebuke this week, Chicago federal Judge April M. Perry dismissed charges against four Democratic activists, citing a litany of grand jury violations that shocked the bench, reported the New York Times.
"I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts," Perry wrote, describing herself as "incredibly shocked" by the misconduct.
Prosecutors had improperly coached grand jurors outside the jury room, stacked the panel by removing jurors who voted against them, and then attempted to conceal their actions by redacting grand jury transcripts.
The judge told Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Andrew S. Boutros that "that trust has been broken" between the government and the judiciary.
The Chicago case is not an isolated incident. In Wyoming, a panel of federal judges recently threw out nine indictments, including murder charges, after finding that U.S. Attorney Darin Smith had addressed grand jurors using inflammatory language about "bad guys" and "murderers," then distributed his business cards to jurors during a break.
Legal experts attribute the surge in prosecutorial failures to structural problems within the Trump administration's Justice Department, which has filled senior positions with inexperienced political loyalists while hundreds of career prosecutors have departed. Unlike junior prosecutors, who receive a week-long training course on grand jury procedures, political appointees often lack such instruction.
The consequences are evident in an unusual spike in "no true bills" — cases where grand juries refuse to return indictments. These rejections have clustered in cities like Los Angeles and Washington, where jurors have rejected cases against immigration protest demonstrators and others accused of opposing administration policies.
A Justice Department spokeswoman characterized the misconduct cases as anomalies, asserting they do not represent "DOJ's overall achievements."
However, Barbara L. McQuade, the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, noted that in her two decades with the department, she had never encountered or even heard of a case where judges examined grand jury transcripts due to prosecutorial misconduct concerns.
“Courts almost never do that, mostly because they trust that the government is acting honestly,” McQuade said. “But if the department demonstrates that it isn’t worthy of that trust, then it invites judges to look under the hood.”
The pattern suggests that prosecutorial pressure to secure convictions against perceived political opponents has compromised the integrity of proceedings that form the foundation of the criminal justice system.