Sean Dunn became a meme and a sort of metaphor for the fight against authoritarian government when he threw a Subway sandwich at an ICE agent and wound up in a courtroom facing charges of assault. The jury acquitted him after seven hours (!) of deliberation.
I’m stuck on the whole matter of the jury needing seven hours to deliberate. That tells me that one or more holdouts had to be convinced to acquit. So those who wanted to acquit either a) thought that throwing a sandwich at a guy does not equal assault; or b) thought he did it, but, jury nullification; or c) some combination thereof.
I, for one, am glad he got acquitted (obviously he did it, but I come down on the side of jury nullification in this case). However, on a precedent-setting level, I think we need to be careful that we don’t allow this case to let anyone think they have carte blanche to throw foodstuffs at LEOs. If you throw a sandwich at a police officer that isn’t acting immorally and/or outside of the parameters of their job and/or the Constitution, you should probably be made to answer for that. Maybe not assault, but something less serious, like misdemeanor disorderly conduct or whatever.
That’s the thing with this case, and it highlights both the incompetence and cruelty of the current US government. If they’d laid such a minor charge from the beginning, they’d have probably gotten a plea deal, or a conviction if he decided to go to court.
But they swung for the fences on this stupid shit, and tried to get him on a felony charge, because they wanted to make an example of him, and spread the fear of doing anything to stand up to the cops. “Don’t do that! Remember what happened to Sandwich Guy? You’ll end up in pound-me-in-the-ass prison!”
And the regular people, both on the Grand Jury and this jury, called bullshit on that. And that’s a good precedent to have. Sure, people probably shouldn’t be throwing perfectly good food at cops, even bad cops, but those cops also shouldn’t be treating such minor stuff like the guy came at them with a machete, or something.
Yes, I agree, this was a textbook case of appropriate jury nullification, refusing to convict someone who had technically violated the law, but was obviously being selectively prosecuted for political reasons.