A federal judge on Wednesday rejected the argument that the “Broadview Six” scandal involving alleged government misconduct should derail the prosecution of an immigration officer accused of sexual assault and facing trial next week.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer Luis Uribe pointed out last week that his December indictment was handed up by the same grand jury at the center of the scandal that undermined the credibility of U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros’ office this summer.
Defense attorney Michael Clancy even told U.S. District Judge Jorge Alonso that the prosecutor directly accused of misconduct, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg, should be forced to testify under oath — even though she was not involved in Uribe’s case.
Alonso on Wednesday handed down a four-page order, in which he declined to dismiss the indictment leveled against Uribe. He did so after agreeing to review grand jury minutes from Uribe’s case. He did not directly address Clancy’s request for a hearing.
“Uribe has failed to provide any evidence that the inappropriate conduct in the Broadview Six [case] prejudiced the grand jury or in any way influenced the grand jury with regard to this case,” Alonso wrote.
Federal prosecutors say Uribe committed multiple “gunpoint sexual assaults” of four women in Schaumburg and Naperville between February and October 2022. He’s set to go to trial Tuesday.
Clancy had argued that Mecklenburg’s alleged misconduct ahead of Uribe’s indictment left the grand jury “hopelessly tainted.” He also complained that Mecklenburg still hasn’t been forced to testify about what happened.
“We don’t even know the level of inappropriate statements that were made to this grand jury by [Mecklenburg],” Clancy said last week. “We have no idea. Because she hasn’t testified. It hasn’t been disclosed.”
Mecklenburg has been accused of three types of misconduct before the grand jury that indicted the group of Operation Midway Blitz protesters known as the “Broadview Six.” She allegedly spoke to grand jurors outside the grand jury room and excused panel members who didn’t agree with the feds’ case.
She’s also accused of “vouching,” a forbidden practice in which prosecutors put their personal credibility on the line to support criminal charges.
U.S. District Judge April Perry presides over the “Broadview Six” case and has yet to rule on a request for sanctions or a special counsel who could investigate Boutros and others. Defense attorneys are due to file their final brief on the matter Sept. 15.
Indicted former Loretto Hospital executive Anosh Ahmed, who returned to the United States last week to face criminal charges here, also threatened to raise the issue. Mecklenburg once handled his prosecution.
Alonso’s order addressed questions raised by Uribe about interpretation issues during grand jury testimony in his case. Clancy has said that, at some point, prosecutors decided an interpreter’s translation was inaccurate.
The judge wrote that the issue was made known to grand jurors in real time, and that the feds obtained an audio recording and created an updated transcript with help from a different interpreter. An FBI agent later summarized the testimony based on the updated transcript, Alonso explained.
“There was no misconduct,” Alonso wrote. “To the contrary, the translation issue shows that the assigned [prosecutor] acted diligently to provide the grand jury with accurate information.”