Feds Announce 'Sweeping' Reforms In Wake Of Dismissed Broadview Six Case

CHICAGO, IL — Following the dismissal of charges against the "Broadview Six" last week, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Andrew Boutros announced "sweeping reforms" to grand jury practices going forward.

The remediation plan, which went into effect Tuesday according to Boutros, aims to streamline grand jury processes while making them more transparent and effective. The changes will include establishing clear rules for federal prosecutors related to grand jury disclosures and expanded education and training.

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Boutros and the Department of Justice have also taken swift action related to internal personnel matters.

“Everybody who has handled high-stakes corporate cases knows that in addition to the importance of thorough, honest, and objective investigations, there must also be remediation, reforms, and process improvements to allow organizations to accept responsibility and make sure that the same mistakes don’t happen again," Boutros said. "What I have formulated and thereafter implemented on Tuesday of this week are among the most sweeping reforms to address root-cause issues in the Northern District of Illinois’s federal prosecutorial practices and procedures, especially as they relate to the grand jury and grand jury disclosures."

These reforms come after U.S. District Judge April Perry said she was "incredibly shocked" upon reviewing unredacted grand jury transcripts in the case against six protestors who were demonstrating outside the Broadview ICE facility. The transcripts described a federal prosecutor “vouching” for the evidence, telling grand jurors who disagreed with the government’s theory they could leave, and having “ex parte” communications with a juror outside the proceedings.

After all charges were dismissed in the case, the U.S. Attorney's Office immediately initiated a review of other grand jury presentations that could have been similarly impacted. The inquiry has included both a root cause analysis as well as an examination of any cases by the Assistant US Attorneys who went into the grand jury in the Broadview Six case.

Boutros said the Attorney's Office also agreed to provide minutes from the grand jury sessions to the defendants' attorneys.

"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. 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,” Boutros said.