‘The most illegal search’: Judges push back against D.C. criminal charges

Veteran defense lawyers and law enforcement experts have been warning about the potential for overreach since the federal government muscled its way into policing decisions in the nation’s capital nearly three weeks ago.

Inside the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., on Monday, those tensions broke into open court.

A federal judge dismissed a weapons case against a man held in the D.C. jail for a week — concluding he was subject to an unlawful search.

“It is without a doubt the most illegal search I’ve ever seen in my life,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said from the bench. “I’m absolutely flabbergasted at what has happened. A high school student would know this was an illegal search.”

The judge said Torez Riley appeared to have been singled out because he is a Black man who carried a backpack that looked heavy. Law enforcement officers said in court papers they found two weapons in Riley’s crossbody bag — after he had previously been convicted on a weapons charge.

The arrest — and the decision to abandon the federal case — come at a time of heightened scrutiny on police and prosecutors in the District.

President Trump has ordered National Guard members and federal law enforcement officers to “clean up” the city and crack down on crime. He signed a new executive order on Monday to ensure more people arrested in D.C. face federal charges and are held in pretrial detention “whenever possible.”

Newly confirmed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro has directed her prosecutors to seek maximum charges against defendants — and to seek to detain them. And the court system is straining to respond.

Riley, who entered the courtroom wearing a white skullcap and a bright orange jumpsuit, had been scheduled for a detention hearing. Instead, on Monday morning, the U.S. Attorney’s office moved to dismiss the case it lodged against him seven days ago.

“The government has determined that dismissal of this matter is in the interests of justice,” prosecutors wrote in court papers.

A spokesman for the Department of Justice said Pirro moved to dismiss the charges once she was shown body camera footage of the arrest on Friday.

Judge Faruqui, who spent about a dozen years as a prosecutor in that same office, expressed outrage about the charges.

“We don’t just charge people criminally and then say, ‘Oops, my bad,'” he said. “I’m at a loss how the U.S. Attorney’s office thought this was an appropriate charge in any court, let alone the federal court.”

But Pirro pushed back against Faruqui’s comments.

“This judge has a long history of bending over backwards to release dangerous felons in possession of firearms and on frequent occasions he has downplayed the seriousness of felons who possess illegal firearms and the danger they pose to our community,” Pirro said in a statement to NPR. “The comments he made today are no different than those he makes in other cases involving dangerous criminals.”

The judge said he had seven cases on his docket Monday that involved people who had been arrested over the weekend — the most ever, he said.

Faruqui also said “on multiple occasions” over the past two weeks, other judges in the federal courthouse had moved to suppress search warrants, a highly unusual move that makes the warrants inadmissible in court.

‘Eyes of the world’ are on the city

A day after police took Riley into custody, they arrested an Amazon delivery driver who had come under suspicion for having alcohol in his vehicle. The driver, Mark Bigelow, has been charged in the same federal court with resisting or impeding an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.

Another man, Edward Dana, was charged last week with making threats against the president. Dana said he was intoxicated and in the course of other rambling — that included singing in the back of a patrol car — he made remarks about Trump, according to the court docket. Dana was unarmed.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya ordered a mental health assessment and competency screening and ordered Dana released last week.

But prosecutors appealed her ruling. On Monday, Chief Judge James Boasberg held his own hearing — and agreed with the magistrate’s decision. He ordered Dana’s release, with conditions.

In the Riley case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Helfand declined to describe the changed circumstances but instead spoke for a few moments privately with the judge, while the courtroom husher blocked the sound of the exchange.

Later, the judge said Helfand was not the problem and praised him for having “the dignity and the courtesy” to move to drop the case. But he told Helfand to deliver a message to his superiors — that charging people based on little or unlawfully obtained evidence would hurt public safety, not improve it.

“If the policy now is to charge first and ask questions later, that’s not going to work,” the judge said. “Arrests stay on people’s records. That has consequences.”

“Lawlessness cannot come from the government,” Judge Faruqui added. “The eyes of the world are on this city right now.”
 

The judge also delivered words of warning to Riley about the danger and harsh consequences of carrying weapons. “Yes, sir,” the defendant replied.

Riley will remain in D.C. custody for now. Authorities in Maryland have 72 hours to pick him up for allegedly violating the terms of his supervised release there, for possessing a weapon last week near the grocery store in D.C.’s Union Market neighborhood. The DOJ spokesperson said Riley was being held pursuant to a detainer warrant for Prince George’s County in Maryland.

Outside the courtroom, Riley’s pregnant wife, Crashawna Williams, said she had missed school and had taken on extra responsibilities for their sons, aged 12, 8, and 3, following Riley’s arrest.

“It’s put everything on me; it’s straining me,” she said.

Public defender Elizabeth Mullin said the search and arrest by a combination of D.C.’s Metropolitan Police officers and federal agents was patently unlawful.

“This never should have happened,” Mullin said. “He was doing nothing wrong. He was just walking into Trader Joe’s to get some food.”