The jurors within the case of The USA of America v. The Sandwich Man (as Sean Charles Dunn is best identified) sized each other up earlier than the ultimate group had even been chosen, asking, “Did you attend the ‘No Kings’ march?”
“It’s like, You’re rattling proper I went,” one juror advised me, referring to the anti-Trump protests all through the nation final month, together with in Washington, D.C. (The juror, who spoke with me a number of days after she and 11 of her friends discovered Dunn not responsible of assault, did so anonymously as a result of, as she defined, Donald Trump’s administration is “very vengeful,” and she or he fears retribution.)
The information of the incident are ostensibly easy: Within the early days of Trump’s militarization of the nation’s capital, Dunn—a 37-year-old Air Drive veteran and, on the time, Justice Division worker—screamed at federal officers stationed in a well-liked nightlife hall, repeatedly calling them fascists, after which hurled a Subway footlong at a Customs and Border Safety agent, hitting him squarely within the chest. “I did it. I threw a sandwich,” Dunn confessed to regulation enforcement upon being apprehended—a type of trendy Williams Carlos Williams (“I’ve eaten the plums that have been within the icebox …”) for the extra carnivorous, angrier set. Though it was broadly reported on the time that the sandwich was salamiDunn later stated it was turkey.
4 days later, regardless of Dunn providing to give up to the police, at the least half a dozen law-enforcement officers in tactical gear staged a nighttime raid on his house, bringing him out in handcuffs—footage of which the White Home blasted out in a extremely stylized video, harking back to a Netflix FBI thriller. Lastly, after a federal grand jury did not indict him on a felony cost, prosecutors tried to get him on misdemeanor assault.
Like almost the whole lot involving Trump, the episode grew to become polarizing, absurdist, stripped of nuance—a Rorschach check for each one’s politics and one’s life expertise. (As somebody who in my early 30s lived simply off the nightlife hall close to 14th and U Streets the place the hoagie histrionics occurred, I initially assumed: Drunk dude, egged on by drunk individuals, does drunk factor.)
And so, in an escapade to which everybody introduced a deeply private perspective—the federal government that dubbed Dunn an “instance of the Deep State”; the D.C. residents who turned him right into a Resistance folks hero memorialized in avenue artwork and Halloween costumes; the sandwich thrower himself, whose legal professionals portrayed him as unfairly focused by the Trump administration—the 12 jurors discovered themselves merely making an attempt to do their jobs, as pretty and impartially as doable.
The juror I spoke with advised me that the jury—three males and 9 ladies (roughly an equal mixture of Black and white)—included an architect, a professor, an analyst, and a few retirees whom she described as most likely “100% anti-Trump” and protecting of their metropolis. She went into the trial pondering it was “bullshit,” she advised me, “however I did enter it making an attempt to be goal.”
She knew from the beginning that any verdict may very well be weaponized: A responsible verdict could be a victory for the Trump administration because it tries to stifle criticism of federal overreach in D.C. However a not-guilty verdict may sign that it’s okay to assault federal brokers who’re making an attempt to do their jobs (or, extra picayune, that city sandwich flinging is a suitable pastime).
The group was cautious to keep away from politics, she stated, and as an alternative targeted on a number of key questions: Had the sandwich truly “exploded throughout” CBP agent Gregory Lairmore, as he’d testified? (Particularly, they analyzed—and at instances mocked—Lairmore’s declare that “I had mustard and condiments on my uniform, and an onion hanging from my radio antenna that evening.”) What was Dunn’s intent in flinging the grinder? And what truly constitutes “bodily hurt”?
On the primary query, a number of jury members struggled to stifle laughter as Lairmore expanded on the hoagie’s alleged explosive properties. “It was like, Oh, you poor child,” the juror advised me. However the group noticed that photographs of the sandwich on the scene confirmed it absolutely intact, nonetheless in its Subway wrapper. “So how did it explode?” the juror puzzled. She stated in addition they mentioned the truth that regulation enforcement had not retrieved or bagged the sandwich as proof, the best way they’d have accomplished with an precise weapon, like a gun.
The jurors additionally debated Dunn’s motivation in remodeling his turkey sub right into a projectile. Was he simply an overgrown toddler, having a tantrum? Wouldn’t it have been totally different, they puzzled, had he flung a rock, slightly than deli meat on a delicate baguette? Was this free speech or assault? Did it matter if his objective was to guard a weak neighborhood?
Dunn’s legal professionals offered a model of this rationalization in court docket: Dunn stated he had seen the officers standing outdoors a homosexual membership, Bunker, that was internet hosting a “Latin Evening.” He frightened they have been about to stage an immigration raid, so he acquired of their faces, calling them “racists” and “fascists” and repeatedly bellowing: “SHAME! SHAME!” His objective had been to attract them away from the membership. (“I succeeded,” Dunn stated, referring to the officers who left their perch in entrance of the membership to swarm him as he ran away.) And the protection had likened Dunn’s act to a innocent “punctuation,” an “exclamation mark on the finish of a verbal outburst”—an argument the juror advised me that a number of of her friends discovered resonant.
However the largest sticking level was whether or not Dunn had triggered bodily hurt. At one level, the jury despatched a notice, asking how “harm” is totally different from “bodily hurt.” “The definition of harm isn’t simply bodily hurt—it’s offensive contact—and we struggled with that as a result of all of us stated we’d be offended if a sandwich hit us, however then this agent was standing with about 14 different brokers on the nook of 14th and U, all kitted out,” the juror advised me.
Particularly compelling, she added, was the protection’s argument that Lairmore himself didn’t appear to have ever felt really threatened, pointing to a number of gag items—a luxurious toy sandwich, a Felony Footlong insignia—from his co-workers that he displayed proudly. Her sense that Lairmore didn’t discover the incident offensive, the juror defined, “was actually a slam dunk.”
In her thoughts, she advised me, the prosecution’s strongest argument was, primarily, that civilized individuals don’t throw sandwiches. “We educate our children to not throw issues after we’re indignant,” she stated. “All of us struggled with that as a result of he admitted he threw that sandwich. It was not respectful or good to throw the sandwich.”
The juror advised me that she personally didn’t know a lot in regards to the case earlier than being chosen—simply that it had initially been dismissed as a felony, and that “the sandwich man was form of an icon round city.” However she stated she “completely wished to serve” as a result of she thought it posed an attention-grabbing authorized query: “Not a felony however a misdemeanor?”
Attention-grabbing authorized questions apart, the trial took on a dadaist sheen, befitting the act itself. The juror advised me that she and her fellow jurors used phrases like absurd, laughableand waste of presidency cash. “We’re presupposed to be trying on the proof, however a transparent majority felt it was nonsensical, like Don’t waste our time or cash,” she stated.
At one level, sandwiches have been served for lunch, an irony not misplaced on a jury spending hours considering the numerous doable makes use of of the breaded type (vitamin, satiety, projectile). “Then we had tons and many jokes in regards to the condiments,” the juror advised me, noting that lunch was, nonetheless, not subs however “extra conventional sandwiches, sadly” (rooster salad, tuna salad, ham, and turkey, particularly).
At one other level, two jurors occurred to be sporting pink—the identical coloration of Dunn’s shirt the evening in query—and somebody steered everybody put on pink the subsequent day, or maybe “D.C. Statehood” shirts, in a small act of resistance. (The movement was rejected.)
Finally, the juror stated the group determined the case on its deserves, deliberating for seven hours over two days, earlier than declaring Dunn not responsible. “We most likely may have gotten the factor resolved on the primary day, however there have been two holdouts, and we actually didn’t wish to steamroll them,” she stated. “We wished them to come back to the conclusions on their very own and see in the event that they may very well be satisfied to modify their place primarily based on the information and proof.”
Nonetheless, the juror I spoke with stated that as she discovered extra in regards to the case, she had come to view Dunn with difficult admiration. “If he was making an attempt to lure regulation enforcement away from harmless individuals, I believe he’s a hero. He was making an attempt to do the precise factor, and he was getting very, very indignant and annoyed, and I believe lots of people can relate to that,” she stated. “He’s an unlikely hero, perhaps, however he stood up for his beliefs, and I respect that.”
At a information convention final week following his acquittal, Dunn appeared outdoors the courtroom in a go well with, trying thinner than he had within the August sandwich throwing video. (The juror advised me that she thought he seemed “like a twiglet,” surmising he’d misplaced weight from the stress of the ordeal, and in addition agreed “100%” with my remark that whereas the inventive depictions had reworked Dunn right into a Banksy-style vigilante—black clad, hat backwards, arm cocked—in actual life he seems to be … much more nerdy.)
After thanking his authorized crew, Dunn stated he had acted to guard the “rights of immigrants,” and quoted the unofficial Latin motto of america: one in every of many. “Which means ‘From many, one.’ Each life issues, irrespective of the place you got here from, irrespective of how you bought right here, irrespective of the way you determine. You’ve the precise to reside a life that’s free,” he stated, earlier than turning away from the assembled media.
“Sean, what does that should do with throwing a sandwich?” a reporter referred to as after him, not unreasonably.
But the query missed the purpose. From virtually the second the sandwich left his hand—earlier than it both did or didn’t explode on a border agent’s bulletproof vest—the incident had transcended the act of merely hurling a hoagie.
The juror’s choice to talk with me anonymously felt rooted within the present second, knowledgeable by her views about this administration, and its penchant for retribution, as a lot as Dunn’s act was knowledgeable by his view of the risk that homosexual individuals and immigrants face on this new Trump period. In any case, for those who concern your nation is slipping towards authoritarianism, isn’t sacrificing your late-night Subway snack the least it is best to do?
“Even the truth that I’m reluctant to present you my title—in some other state of affairs, I most likely wouldn’t thoughts, however I really feel like any individual may come after me,” the juror advised me. “Would I’ve felt that approach within the Biden administration or the George W. Bush administration? No approach.”
Marie-Rose Sheinerman contributed to this report.
