Crime & Law

Federal Prosecutor at Center of Botched ‘Broadview Six’ Case Retires, Defends Conduct

The embattled federal prosecutor whose alleged misconduct before a grand jury last year led to the dismissal of the “Broadview Six” case and a review of her previous cases has left Chicago’s U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg retired effective Thursday, according to a new court filing, and is defending her conduct in the politically charged case.

“Ms. Mecklenburg plainly has additional legal arguments to make and facts to provide,” her attorneys wrote in a brief Thursday, one week ahead of a critical hearing in which a federal judge could appoint a special counsel to investigate potential wrongdoing in the Broadview prosecution.

But when Mecklenburg informed the U.S. Attorney’s Office that she intended to make those filings, she claimed she was informed by the office that because she was a U.S. Department of Justice employee, she was “not permitted to file anything on her behalf and could be disciplined or terminated if she did so.”

“Ms. Mecklenburg then notified the U.S. Attorney’s Office that she was retiring, effective on September 24, in part so that she can address these issues on her own behalf,” her attorneys wrote.

Prosecutors alleged the Broadview defendants were part of a group that surrounded a government vehicle last September, “with the intent to hinder and impede” a federal agent from proceeding to the facility and “discharging the duties of his office.” According to the initial indictment, the protesters “banged aggressively” on the vehicle’s windows and hood and broke one of its mirrors and a rear windshield wiper.

But after unsealed transcripts from the grand jury proceedings in that case revealed Mecklenburg allegedly excused skeptical grand jurors, admitted speaking with grand jurors outside of the hearings and “vouched” for the merits of the allegations against the defendants, the case fell apart and was ultimately dropped.

Judge April Perry at the time said she was “incredibly shocked” by that alleged misconduct and had never seen the “types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.”

Mecklenburg in her filing defended her conduct, claiming her “colloquy with the grand jury” fell within DOJ guidelines and that she never excused any grand juror based on his or her “opposition to the government’s case.”

“When a grand juror expressly stated that he/she could not listen with an open mind, she correctly … if perhaps inartfully, told him/her that if he/she could not do so he/she should excuse himself, which he/she then did,” her attorneys wrote.

After the collapse of the Broadview case, Chicago’s U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros announced a series of grand jury procedural reforms and said his office would be reviewing scores of grand jury cases from across Mecklenburg’s 20-year career after discovering “serious irregularities” in Mecklenburg’s “grand jury presentations.”

The episode has marked a black eye for Boutros and his office, which has stated in legal filings that there “can be no doubt that mistakes were made in the prosecution of this case.”

In Thursday’s briefing, Mecklenburg’s attorneys claim that “(t)o the extent that Ms. Mecklenburg made mistakes,” — including vouching for the strength of the case and interacting with grand jurors outside the proceedings — “she owns them.”

Her attorneys said she also immediately informed her superiors of those interactions and memorialized them on the record.

“At bottom, there is no basis for them to smear her with meritless accusations that she lied or acted in bad faith,” her attorneys wrote. “The record as a whole shows, and if this motion to intervene is granted will further show, a prosecutor who did not act with animus or ill will, and certainly did not engage in any conduct in contempt of court.”

Perry is set to hear oral arguments on the former defendants’ request for a special prosecutor next Thursday.

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