Law360 (May 22, 2026, 4:52 PM EDT) --

Andrew Boutros

An Illinois federal judge said Thursday her trust in U.S. Department of Justice attorneys had been "broken" after reviewing unredacted grand jury transcripts in a criminal case against anti-ICE protesters that revealed prosecutorial misconduct, shortly after which Chicago's top federal prosecutor moved to dismiss the charges.

U.S. District Judge April Perry said that she was "incredibly shocked" by the redactions and that she had "never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury" that she saw reflected in the transcript of grand jury proceedings. The grand jury would charge six people with unlawfully blocking a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent's vehicle during a September protest at a suburban Chicago ICE facility.

That included improper prosecutorial vouching to the grand jurors, with an assistant U.S. attorney "putting her personal credibility and trustworthiness on the line in support of the charges," as well as improper, substantive prosecutorial communications with grand jurors outside the grand jury room, and prosecutors excusing grand jurors who disagreed with the government's case from the deliberations, Judge Perry said.

The judge said she was troubled by the fact that all of that was redacted from the transcripts she had previously reviewed in the case.

"Mistakes happen. They happen to all of us. But as I tell my children, you own it. You admit to it. You apologize for it, and you move on. What you do not do is hide it," Judge Perry said, adding that she had relied on the attorneys' personal representations in the case. "And I do that because, first of all, I treat every attorney who appears before me as an officer of the court. But secondly, because I put even more reliance on Department of Justice attorneys. Your sole goal is to do justice. Your client is justice itself."

"I do believe deeply in the presumption of regularity and that most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing," she went on. "That trust has been broken."

Judge Perry's comments came during a hearing in Illinois federal court Thursday on the defendants' bid to disclose the prosecutor's instructions of the law to the grand jury, which was closed to the public, due to the anticipated discussion of grand jury materials and in an effort to avoid tainting the pool of jurors for trial. Unsealed transcripts, made available late Thursday, offer a window into the proceedings.

The case had been set to go to trial this Tuesday, but the judge vacated that trial date after the revelations. Noting that she had previously denied a motion to compel discovery on vindictive prosecution, Judge Perry said the defendants were entitled to a briefing and possible hearing on the issue if they wanted to raise it.

Counsel for the protesters then urged the court to unseal the transcripts of the closed hearing, with one lawyer arguing that "if it happened here, it's probably happened in other offices."

"Based on what's going on in this country right now, I think the public has a right to know about what you just told us, because I think it does impact other cases," said Christopher Parente of Cheronis & Parente LLC, counsel for defendant Brian Straw. "I know there are other cases right now where people are trying to get grand jury transcripts, and other judges are trying to weigh, like, is the U.S. attorney's office acting in the right way? And based on what I heard having come out of that office, I'm sick to my stomach about what you just described to me."

Judge Perry ordered the government to provide both the redacted and unredacted versions of the grand jury transcripts to the defendants but didn't immediately rule on the unsealing, taking a recess to await the government's position on the matter.

When the court resumed its proceedings, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros appeared before the judge, according to the transcripts. He said the government took no position on the matter, so Judge Perry granted the motion.

Then he moved to dismiss the charges against the remaining defendants with prejudice.

"It is my very sincere belief, Your Honor, that no prosecutor acted intentionally in misleading you, and that there was no desire to mislead the court and no deliberate misconduct on the part of the prosecutors," Boutros told the judge. "I know Your Honor has indicated that you may hold a hearing or will hold a hearing. ... But I did want you to know from me, that from my assessment, having spoken extensively to the prosecutors, I do not believe that whatever errors were done specifically as it relates to the redactions, were done intentionally or with a desire to mislead the court."

Boutros said that he hadn't been immediately aware of vouching in the grand jury or any communications with grand jurors outside the jury room, but that he quickly moved to dismiss the indictment after he was informed. He also said he had been aware of the excusing of grand jurors in real time, and immediately called off that grand jury session. He then informed the Northern District of Illinois' chief judge, and later issued all-office guidance on how to handle tension in a grand jury or jurors that don't want to deliberate, he said.

"I will tell Your Honor that as upset as you are and have been, I was upset, as well. I, too, had not seen conduct like that, and it upset me, which is why we did dismiss that indictment and proceeded with an information," Boutros said. "In doing so, we wanted to moot whatever had taken place in the grand jury. And we were also removing the felony that had now been hanging out there."

Boutros added that he could have told the prosecutors to go to a different grand jury and secure a new indictment, but that he'd decided to proceed just on the misdemeanor charge "reflective of all the things that we have just finished talking about."

"So I wanted Your Honor to hear from me. Specifically, I wanted the public to hear from me, because I do agree with you that we do have an open court system, and the public should know what's going on, and they should hear it from the chief federal law enforcement officer," he said.

Even so, Boutros defended the remaining charges, saying he "was prepared and still would have been prepared" to go to trial on the misdemeanor count because he believed in "the rule of law."

Boutros said that if a federal judge or sitting member of Congress had been treated the way the ICE agent allegedly was by these defendants, "we would not be having discussions about whether or not that was appropriate or not appropriate."

"And it is for the grace of God that that agent moved at 2 miles an hour, that the agent didn't panic and strike on the accelerator and hurt somebody, that the agent didn't panic and pull out his gun and shoot somebody, that nobody on that scene perhaps had a gun and shot at the agent," he said. "And so I do want to say, we stand by the charges that we were prepared to bring, but when we became aware of the conduct in the grand jury, we corrected it by dismissing the indictment immediately."

Boutros added that he still believes there's probable cause that a crime was committed, and it was the misdemeanor his office had been prepared to take to trial Tuesday.

Judge Perry, however, said he was "significantly undercutting your mea culpa here by standing behind the charges and continuing to vilify these particular defendants." She then adjourned the hearing, saying remaining issues, including possible sanctions, could be discussed another time.

In a later order posted to the docket, the judge set a hearing for June 2.

Counsel for defendant Andre Martin said in a statement that while they welcomed the outcome, "it is terribly sad that it only happened because severe prosecutorial misconduct in the case came to light."

"Andre Martin and his co-defendants have suffered massive and immeasurable harm for the past 8 months — living under the threat of going to prison simply for exercising their 1st Amendment rights as decent, honorable citizens and seeking to protect their fellow human beings," said Terence Campbell and Valerie Davenport of Cotsirilos Poulos & Campbell Ltd. "Today, at least, truth and justice prevailed."

Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP attorney Nancy DePodesta, representing defendant Michael Rabbitt, told Law360 they were happy the charges were dismissed, but said they never should have been brought, because no crime was committed. 

"The conduct of federal prosecutors here was shocking. Not only was there gross misconduct in the grand jury, but the lengths that prosecutors went to cover up the misconduct is something I never imagined — certainly not from this office," DePodesta said in a statement.

"They intentionally redacted portions of the grand jury transcripts they were required by the court to produce. And when they were on the verge of having to turn over those transcripts, they dismissed the felony count to further conceal the misconduct. It didn't stop there. But for Judge Perry requiring the government to produce unredacted copies of the grand jury transcripts, we would have proceeded to trial next week without knowing the egregious misconduct that occurred. This is not how the criminal justice system is supposed to work, and we all deserve so much better."

Attorneys for defendants Brian Straw and Kat Abughazaleh did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.

Straw, Abughazaleh, Rabbitt, Martin and two other defendants, Catherine Sharp and Joselyn Walsh, were charged in October with conspiracy and forcibly impeding federal officers. The charges stemmed from a Sept. 26 protest outside an ICE processing center in the Chicago suburb of Broadview, where there had been daily protests — typically drawing fewer than 50 protesters and occasionally more than 100 — against the Trump administration's immigration enforcement crackdown in Illinois that fall.

Prosecutors claimed that early in the morning of Sept. 26, the defendants crowded around the front and side of a government SUV, stood in its path, banged on its hood, doors and windows, and pushed against the slowly moving vehicle to hinder its movement. The government also alleged they broke one of the SUV's side mirrors and rear windshield wiper and etched "Pig" into its paint.

The government moved in March to dismiss with prejudice all charges against Walsh and Sharp. Prosecutors moved earlier this month to toss the conspiracy charge against the remaining defendants.

Rabbitt is represented by Nancy L. DePodesta and Carly Chocron of Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP.

Straw is represented by Christopher Parente and Damon Cheronis of Cheronis & Parente.

Abughazaleh is represented by Josh Herman of the Law Office of Joshua G. Herman.

Martin is represented by Terence Campbell and Valerie Davenport of Cotsirilos Poulos & Campbell.

The federal government is represented by Matthew Skiba, Sheri H. Mecklenburg, William R. Hogan Jr. and Andres Almendarez of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois.

The case is U.S. v. Rabbitt et al., case number 1:25-cr-00693, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

--Additional reporting by Dorothy Atkins.

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