Judge Todd Edelman made the David Hearns Reflecting Pool case dismissed with prejudice on Thursday, barring Jeanine Pirro’s office from bringing charges against David Hearn again over damage tied to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. For Hearn, the ruling ends the threat of a renewed prosecution in the same matter.
Todd Edelman’s Thursday order
Edelman said the case involved “exceptional circumstances” and wrote that the government's “own representations make plain” that bringing another indictment against David “Davey” Hearn “is theoretical at best, and more likely, is simply fanciful.” He also said the office “has no right to retain the ability to compound the errors it has already made, or even to threaten to do so, at Mr. Hearn’s expense.”
The order followed the government’s late July decision to drop the case after evidence showed the area was already damaged. The office also said it could not prove more than $1,000 in damage, a limit that left the prosecution without the factual basis it had first pursued.
August motion by Hearn’s team
Hearn’s team moved in August to stop the office from bringing another case, and attorneys for Hearn and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia later argued last month over whether the dismissal should be with prejudice. Edelman’s ruling settled that dispute by removing the option to refile charges in this matter.
The judge’s written order also said Hearn “faces the unique possibility that the government will revive this case — one that it has already announced to be meritless — based on political pressure brought by the President of the United States upon his subordinate officers.” In the same order, he wrote that Jeanine Pirro had “criticized the decision of the Office of the United States Attorney to drop the case in the most vituperative terms; demanded that the government reinstitute the prosecution, in part because of Mr. Hearn’s political activity and the identity of one of his attorneys; and publicly entertained the possibility of firing the United States Attorney as a result of the dismissal.”
Hearn’s attorneys
Norm Eisen, Mary Dohrmann, Steve Levin and Michael Bromwich said the ruling “is a victory for the rule of law and for an innocent American seeking justice.” They added, “Today’s decision protects Mr. Hearn from that threat, allowing him to move forward with his life as he deserves.”
The practical result is that Jeanine Pirro’s office cannot revive the Reflecting Pool case against Hearn on the same theory. Any future attempt would have to overcome a dismissal with prejudice and the court’s finding that another indictment was, at most, a remote possibility.
