Jury Dumps Criminal Charges Against Tow Truck Driver Who Towed An ICE Vehicle During An Arrest

from the keep-losing,-losers dept

This administration runs on vengeance. If it’s not Donald Trump aiming the DOJ at his personal enemies, it’s the DOJ itself taking a shotgun approach to justice (read: filling it full of holes) by filing as many criminal charges against anti-ICE protesters as possible. The charges have been transparently bogus — an obvious attempt by the administration to intimidate protesters into silence. And juries — even extremely submissive grand juries — have refused to buy what the government can’t even be bothered to sell properly.

Every loss by this administration is a win for what’s left of America and its constitutional ideals. Here’s one to cherish, just because the DOJ decided to brag about this supposed slam dunk a couple of months before a California jury went Wembanyana and swatted this shot halfway across the court.

The story starts here, back in September:

A tow truck driver from South Los Angeles has been arrested on a federal criminal complaint alleging he illegally towed a government vehicle used by law enforcement during an immigration-related arrest. 

The U.S. Department of Justice issued a media release on Tuesday morning indicating that Bobby Nunez was charged with one count of theft of government property. 

An affidavit filed with the complaint states that on Aug. 15, Nunez interfered with federal law enforcement officers conducting immigration enforcement in downtown L.A. This particular case involved a 23-year-old Colombian woman named Tatiana Mafla-Martinez, whose vehicle was boxed in by two government vehicles, preventing her from getting away. 

Here are some more details about the case, albeit supplied solely by the government:

While the second man was being addressed by the officers, Nunez allegedly got into his tow truck and towed one of the government cars blocking Mafla-Martinez’s car. Per the DOJ, the car he towed had its keys inside and also had a firearm, although it was locked in a safe. 

“Addressed” of course means “arrested.” And while the officers were otherwise occupied, Nunez towed their vehicle away because it was blocking access to the apartments. Nunez apparently resided at these apartments. The government says it found the tow truck “parked in its assigned parking space” two days after this incident (August 17). Somehow, it didn’t get around to arresting him for another two weeks.

After the arrest, DOJ prosecutor Bill Essayli decided to get on the X and brag about the nailing of this alleged criminal:

“Apparently he thought it would be funny to interfere with our immigration enforcement operations,” he wrote on X in September. “Now he can laugh behind bars while he faces justice. Nunez is looking at up to 10 years in federal prison if convicted.”

Whether or not the tow truck driver, Bobby Nunez, thought this was funny remains (like the rest of the case) an unproven allegation. But it is objectively funny, as this recording clearly demonstrates:

Essayli should know better than to run his mouth in public. His career with the Trump administration has basically been a long run of failures in courts while pursuing federal charges against protesters, journalists, and anyone else the administration thinks needs to be vindictively prosecuted.

The last laugh belongs to Bobby Nunez:

The South Los Angeles tow truck driver who was arrested in September on a federal criminal complaint charging him with “stealing government property” after he towed a government vehicle whose occupants were making an immigration arrest in DTLA was acquitted last week, prosecutors say.

We see what Essayli said about this. Nunez’s lawyers — both public defenders — pointed out the actual facts of the situation:

Deputy Federal Public Defenders Rebecca Harris and David Menninger, argued that the law enforcement vehicle was blocking the driveway to the apartment complex and that their client moved it only one block away to stop the impediment of traffic in the high-density apartment complex. It was returned less than 15 minutes later, they argued.

The jury apparently agreed: no (lasting) harm, no foul. The government suffered some temporary embarrassment but it still managed to carry out its arrests even if one of its cars was now located a few hundred feet away from where officers had (deliberately and carelessly) parked it.

Bill Essayli managed to handle the loss with whatever grace he has left in his body, simply stating that Nunez had been found not guilty and that he had no further comment. Local abhorrent/Trump deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, of course, had to get up on his bitchiness horse and ride off into the sunset of his own humanity:

“Another example of blatant jury nullification in a blue city,” Miller wrote on X on Sunday. “The justice system depends on a jury of peers with a shared system of interests and values. Mass migration tribalizes the entire legal system.”

Good luck trying to parse whatever the fuck that is. I’ve tried multiple times and the best I’ve come up with is “Froth froth froth froth blue city froth.” Complaining about jury nullification is something someone does when they don’t like the outcome. And what makes this nullification more “blatant” than any other goes unexplained, although we all know it just means that it happened in Los Angeles.

If the DOJ is going to insist on being Trump’s vengeful marionette, things are never going to improve. Juries can be swayed easily, but they also tend to know when the government expects them to be the kangaroos in the court. The more extreme the government’s actions, the less likely they are to be complicit in obvious bullshit. No one in the administration is learning anything from this, which means they’re doomed to repeat their own recent history ad infinitum.

Filed Under: bill essayli, bobby nunez, california, dhs, doj, ice, mass deportation, stephen miller, trump administration