00:00In a rare occurrence, federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C. failed to get a grand jury indictment against the man accused of throwing a sandwich at a federal officer.
00:13It's very rare for a prosecutor of any kind in front of a grand jury to fail to obtain an indictment.
00:20But that's exactly what happened in the case of 37-year-old Sean Dunn. He was seen on video hitting a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent with a subway sandwich.
00:30A law professor we spoke with said it's pretty rare for grand juries to reject indictments.
00:36It doesn't happen very often, in part because prosecutors are repeat players. They go in front of grand juries all the time. They know what they need to present to get an indictment. And if they don't think they have it, then they just won't bring the case to the grand jury in the first place.
00:58Data shows that in 2010, of the 193,000 cases pursued by U.S. attorneys, only 11 of them ended because a grand jury failed to indict. That's .006 percent.
01:11The prosecutors control the information that goes before the grand jury. It's a secret proceeding. It is not, the burden is probable cause. It's not beyond a reasonable doubt. So it's a very light burden. And the rules of evidence don't apply.
01:33Despite that, it's the second time this week it's happened. Just two days earlier, another D.C. grand jury declined a third time to indict Sidney Reed, a woman accused of assaulting an FBI agent during an inmate swap with ICE.
01:47Because double jeopardy does not apply when there's been no charge, prosecutors can try as many grand juries as they want.
01:54There's no legal bar to that. Whether it's a good idea or not, reasonable people might debate that one.
02:03Prosecutors announced Reed will now be charged with a misdemeanor. It's unclear if they plan to do the same with Dunn or try for felony charges in front of another grand jury.
02:12We can do that. It depends on whether the Department of Justice decides they want to, you know, impanel a couple more grand juries for a guy who threw a sandwich at somebody.
02:25For Straight Arrow News, I'm Kaylee Carey. For more unbiased, fact-driven news, download the Straight Arrow News mobile app today or go to san.com.
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