2026-04-06T10:00:56.036Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/06/politics/jeanine-pirro-trials-dc-juries
在珍妮娜·皮尔罗领导下的华盛顿特区美国检察官办公室今年在华盛顿联邦地区法院的审判胜率异乎寻常地低，而此时白宫一直在敦促唐纳德·特朗普总统领导下的司法部落实起诉工作。
该办公室今年的前八起刑事审判中仅胜诉了一半，远低于全国平均水平。
据近几个月来与华盛顿特区地区法院陪审团有过接触的十余名人士透露，这一不稳的战绩似乎源于法庭上的多个问题，包括陪审团对特朗普政府、联邦调查局和司法部失去信任。
华盛顿特区近期的陪审团审判结果和大陪审团起诉失败也凸显了司法部内部的一个长期顽疾：任何高级检察官都可能在这座 courthouse 面临困境，因为总统公开表示要追究政治宿怨。
美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）此前报道称，司法部长帕姆·邦迪在过去14个月里未能起诉特朗普的政治对手——这些起诉有时被大陪审团或法官驳回——这加剧了特朗普对她的不满，最终导致她于周三被解职。
在本周末接受CNN采访时被问及联邦刑事审判的战绩时，美国检察官珍妮娜·皮尔罗多次回应称：“一派胡言！”
皮尔罗驳斥了政治环境损害其办公室审判结果的说法。“如果陪审团认为我们未能达到举证责任，那也只能如此，”她说道。
她还对仅将今年的无罪判决和悬而未决的陪审团“作为司法系统现状的表征”提出异议，称她为“定罪率感到非常自豪”。
然而该办公室的几名前检察官表示，政治局势使得今年的审判比往年更加困难。
“他们已经失去了陪审团的支持，”一名曾在该办公室任职的特区白领律师谈到其前东家时说道。
“这是司法部投下的阴影，”该律师补充道，并提到司法部总部大楼和毗邻华盛顿特区联邦法院的劳工部大楼外如今悬挂着特朗普的大型横幅。“这一切都没有帮助。”
多位消息人士告诉CNN，未来几周内，该部门可能会试图在民主党占绝对优势的华盛顿特区的大陪审团面前起诉特朗普的政治对手，这对皮尔罗的办公室来说已是另一项挑战。
今年，特区检察官在联邦刑事审判中的胜率远低于司法部的典型水平。根据联邦司法系统的审判统计数据，过去三年中，全国约90%的陪审团裁定刑事被告有罪，其余10%投票宣告无罪。
几名熟悉该办公室的人士告诉CNN，该办公室的检察官们清楚地意识到，陪审员们怀疑案件背后存在政治因素，因此他们的案件可能会面临怎样的局面。
邦迪离职后，司法部发言人在给CNN的一份声明中对皮尔罗的执法工作表示赞扬。发言人查德·吉尔马丁声称，“极左翼活动人士”可能正试图“破坏”其办公室的工作。
并非皮尔罗办公室在法庭上遇到的所有挑战都能直接归咎于她担任美国检察官期间的决策。该办公室在国家安全和暴力犯罪案件中屡获成功，华盛顿特区的一些暴力犯罪案件数量有所下降，且许多被告仍选择认罪而非接受审判，这在联邦司法系统中是常态。
皮尔罗周六吹嘘了她将陪审团定罪率与认罪率相结合的战绩，称今年共有84名联邦被告认罪，而无罪判决仅有两起。她还吹嘘了其任职期间在华盛顿特区高等法院处理的数百起认罪案件，该办公室也在此审理当地案件。
“这些人认罪是因为他们知道我们会在审判中定罪他们，”皮尔罗说道。
大陪审团的抵制
皮尔罗办公室面临的陪审团问题最早于去年在多起秘密大陪审团程序中显现，当时大多数大陪审员拒绝起诉那些可能反对特朗普或其政策的人，尤其是在总统对该市实施执法镇压期间。
皮尔罗办公室在去年夏天起诉一名向联邦移民官员投掷一英尺长的赛百味三明治的律师时，多次被陪审团驳回。大陪审团拒绝起诉投掷三明治者肖恩·邓恩，而在成功获得起诉书后，华盛顿特区联邦法院的审判陪审团最终认定邓恩 assault 罪名不成立。
今年2月，皮尔罗办公室未能获得大陪审团批准，对民主党参议员马克·凯利以及另外五名现任国会议员的前军方和情报官员同僚提出指控。
这起意外提起的诉讼最终不了了之，因为法院的一名资深法官理查德·莱昂当时正在敲定一份意见书，称针对凯利的视频报复行为侵犯了其言论自由权。
对华盛顿特区法律界许多人而言，这一事件是一个分水岭，标志着皮尔罗试图在法庭上推进哪怕是存在问题的案件。
大陪审团驳回起诉——在法庭上通常被称为“真实起诉书否决案”——在过去的司法部任期内非常罕见。华盛顿特区法律界的多名人士如今表示，这类否决已成为陪审员抵制司法部案件的一种趋势。
悬而未决的陪审团和分歧判决
今年八起刑事陪审团审判中有四起未作出有罪判决，其中两起因陪审团无法就裁决达成一致而被宣布为无效审判，另外两起则直接宣告被告无罪释放。
今年1月，检察官起诉了科特尼·梅里茨——一名民主党前国会议员的丈夫，指控他为其搬家公司骗取了超过2万美元的新冠疫情期间的政府贷款。检察官在审判中指出，梅里茨没有员工工资记录，收入也远低于其声称的数额。
去年卸任并再次参选国会议员的科里·布什为其丈夫出庭作证，谈到了她在疫情期间与梅里茨的相遇以及她在华盛顿的任职经历。
梅里茨在为自己辩护时坚称自己无罪。检察官艾米丽·米勒告诉陪审团，梅里茨“在这里受审并非因为他是谁”。
陪审团 deliberated 了三天，多次告知法官他们陷入僵局。
“请告诉我们该如何推进，当个人判断已明确表达，且无论进一步讨论如何都不会改变时，”陪审团在第三天写给法官的信中说道。
法官贾·科布宣布审判无效。
熟悉陪审团 deliberation 过程的人士告诉CNN，对联邦政府的不信任和愤怒似乎导致一些陪审员倾向于行使陪审团否决权，即他们拒绝支持检察官，以此传递更广泛的信息。
然而梅里茨的辩护律师贾斯汀·格尔凡德上周告诉CNN，其辩护策略并非旨在争取陪审团否决权。他认为检察官的证据本身并不充分。
“我相信无论本届政府是谁，陪审团都不会定罪，”格尔凡德说道。
审判结束后，美国检察官办公室请求驳回对梅里茨的指控。
去年12月，另一起针对萨尔瓦多帮派成员的陈年案件也出现了陪审团悬而未决的情况。皮尔罗的办公室已于本周开始对该案进行重审。
今年1月，另一个陪审团在一起联邦毒品和持有毒品审判中未能达成一致裁决。皮尔罗的办公室计划于8月对该案进行重审。
今年2月的另一起审判中，特区检察官获得了部分定罪，但未达到预期目标。
被告是前美联储顾问约翰·哈罗德·罗杰斯，被指控向中国传递美联储的机密信息。
陪审团听取了11名证人的证词并 deliberated 了一天后，最终裁定罗杰斯面临的更严重的经济间谍罪不成立。检察官表示，罗杰斯在12年时间里向冒充中国研究生的联系人传递了经济贸易机密。根据起诉书，检察官称罗杰斯的联系人实际上为“中国情报和安全机构”工作。
陪审团仍裁定罗杰斯在2020年的监察长采访中就是否分享过美联储的私人信息撒谎罪名成立。他将于5月被判刑。
在今年两起完全无罪判决中的一起中，特朗普的政治因素笼罩了整个审判。
一名特勤局特工在1月作证称，去年9月，一名男子在总统直升机从白宫草坪起飞时，用猫玩具激光笔对准了直升机。这是一项被指控的重罪。该男子的辩护律师雅各布·温克勒辩称，他并非故意为之。
联邦公设辩护人亚历克西斯·加德纳援引了联邦政府对特朗普的效忠。她向陪审团辩称，一名菜鸟特勤局特工在街头遇到温克勒时反应过度，且两人都不知道海军陆战队一号当时在空中的位置。
“该特工作证称，他高度警惕政治暴力事件增加，第二天要参加查理·柯克的葬礼，他的工作就是保护特朗普。在他看来，一切都和特朗普有关。特朗普就在头顶上方。哦，上帝，保护国王免受这个下等人和这个猫玩具的伤害，”加德纳在向华盛顿特区陪审团的结案陈词中说道。
“政府向你们证明的是，你从司法部得不到任何公正，”加德纳说道。
陪审团在不到两小时内达成了一致裁决。温克勒被无罪释放。
华盛顿的几名法律专家告诉CNN，陪审团拒绝定罪的情况可能会开始损害执法部门对那些严重威胁公共安全的被告提起合法诉讼的能力。
“如今，当检察官站在陪审团面前时，司法部的公信力已经严重受损，信任度极低——而涉及公共安全的日常案件就成了牺牲品，”JP·库尼说道，他曾是美国检察官办公室的资深检察官，目前正在竞选国会议员，并于去年1月在担任特别检察官杰克·史密斯针对特朗普的刑事调查的高级副手后被司法部解雇。
皮尔罗的办公室仍在处理一些重要的可能 upcoming 审判。
去年5月，一名因仇恨犯罪被指控杀害一对离开犹太社区活动的年轻夫妇的男子，正在等待司法部就其是否会在华盛顿特区地区法院寻求死刑判决作出决定，该市以联邦死刑审判难度极高而闻名。
去年11月，一名在繁忙的地铁站外枪杀两名国民警卫队成员（其中一人死亡）的嫌疑人也在华盛顿特区地区法院等待审判，检察官同样寻求死刑判决。
今年8月，被指控参与制造1988年苏格兰洛克比空难泛美航空103号班机炸弹的利比亚男子，将在美国当局数十年的追查后迎来审判。
皮尔罗的办公室还即将对华盛顿特区市议员特雷扬·怀特提起受贿审判。该案目前将由该办公室资历最深的白领检察官之一负责审理。
“我等不及了，”皮尔罗今年1月在接受华盛顿特区当地电视台NBC4采访时谈到即将到来的怀特审判时说道。“我期待定罪。”
人事变动和棘手案件
消息人士称，皮尔罗的办公室近期在法庭上遇到的部分困难，因该办公室经验丰富的检察官大规模离职而雪上加霜。
许多人在皮尔罗的前任埃德·马丁任职期间被解雇，因为他们曾参与起诉2021年1月6日美国国会大厦骚乱中的特朗普支持者——这是近年来规模最大的联邦执法行动之一，也耗费了检察官办公室的大量精力。
美国检察官办公室的环境似乎足够动荡，曾担任纽约县法官的皮尔罗最近致信联邦地区法院，征求其对其直属律师工作表现的反馈。她告诉CNN，她这么做是因为，“任何有成效的领导者都应该寻求反馈，了解其团队的表现，以便我们能够持续改进。”
多位消息人士告诉CNN，并非所有法官都给出了建设性的回应。
然而，由于皮尔罗在审判中的成功率平平，辩护律师们已悄悄改变了办案策略。
“我们希望人们审理棘手的案件。如果证据确凿，当事人通常会认罪”，不会选择接受审判，一名去年离开该办公室的美国检察官办公室检察官最近告诉CNN。“但如果我是这个地区的辩护律师，我会建议我的当事人，这是一个可以坦然接受失败的机会。因为你可能会赢。”
CNN的埃文·佩雷斯和霍姆斯·莱布兰德对本文亦有贡献。
Jeanine Pirro’s office keeps prosecuting Trump’s foes. Some DC jurors are pushing back
2026-04-06T10:00:56.036Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/06/politics/jeanine-pirro-trials-dc-juries
The DC US attorney’s office under Jeanine Pirro has had an unusually low win rate in trials in Washington’s federal district court this year, at a moment when the White House has been clamoring for President Donald Trump’s Justice Department to deliver on prosecutions.
In its first eight criminal trials this year, the DC US attorney’s office has won only half of them — far below the national average.
The dicey record appears to stem from several issues in court, including a jury pool that has lost trust in the Trump administration, the FBI and the Justice Department, according to roughly a dozen people who have interacted with juries in the DC District Court in recent months.
Recent jury trial outcomes and grand jury failures in DC also highlight a persistent problem across the department, where any top prosecutor may have a difficult time in a courthouse because of the president’s public desire to pursue political vendettas.
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s failures over the past 14 months to prosecute Trump’s political enemies — which at times were blocked by grand juries or judges — added to Trump’s frustration with her before she was ousted Wednesday, CNN has reported.
Asked about the federal criminal trial record in an interview with CNN this weekend, US Attorney Jeanine Pirro responded multiple times with, “Hogwash!”
Pirro dismissed the idea that the political environment is hurting her office’s results. “If a jury feels that we haven’t met our burden, then so be it,” she said.
She also took issue with only looking at the acquittals and hung juries this year “as indicative of what’s going on in the system,” saying she was “very proud of the conviction rate.”
Yet several former prosecutors in the office say the political situation makes trying cases more difficult than in previous years.
“They’ve lost the jury pool,” one DC white-collar attorney said about his former office.
“It’s the shadow cast by the Department of Justice,” the attorney added, noting the large banners of Trump now hanging from the Justice Department headquarters building downtown and from the Labor Department, which is next to the DC federal courthouse. “None of this is helping.”
In the coming weeks, sources told CNN, it’s possible the department may attempt to secure indictments against Trump political foes from grand juries in heavily Democratic DC, which has proved to be another challenge for Pirro’s office.
DC prosecutors this year have been far below the Justice Department’s typical winning rate in federal criminal trials. About 90% of juries nationwide convicted criminal defendants, while the remaining 10% voted to acquit during each of the last three years, according to trial statistics from the federal judiciary.
Prosecutors in the office are realistic about how their cases may be met by jurors who suspect politics are at play, several people familiar with the office have told CNN.
A Justice Department spokesman commended Pirro’s law enforcement work in a statement provided to CNN after Bondi’s departure. The spokesman, Chad Gilmartin, asserted that “far-left activists” may be trying to “undermine” her office’s efforts.
Not all challenges in court for Pirro’s office can be directly attributed to her decisions as US attorney. And the office has been repeatedly successful in its national security and violent crime cases, with some violent crimes in DC on the decline and many defendants still choosing to plead guilty rather than go to trial, as is typical in the federal justice system.
Pirro on Saturday touted her record of jury convictions combined with guilty pleas, which she said adds up to 84 guilty federal defendants this year, versus just two acquittals. She also touted during her tenure the hundreds of guilty defendants in DC’s Superior Court, where her office also brings local cases.
“Those are guilty pleas because the defendants know that we’re going to convict them at trial,” Pirro said.
Pushback from grand juries
The jury pool issues for Pirro’s office first cropped up last year in several secret grand jury proceedings, where a majority of the grand jurors declined to indict people who may be opposed to Trump or his policies, especially during the president’s law enforcement crackdown in the city.
Pirro’s office was rebuffed by multiple juries in its prosecution of the lawyer who threw a footlong Subway sandwich at a federal immigration officer last summer. A grand jury refused to indict the sandwich thrower, Sean Dunn, and then once the indictment was secured, trial jurors in the DC federal court determined Dunn was not guilty of assault.
In February, Pirro’s office couldn’t get a grand jury’s approval for proposed charges against Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly and five other former military and intelligence officers now serving in Congress.
The surprise attempted case fizzled as another longtime judge in the courthouse, Richard Leon, was finalizing an opinion that said retaliation toward Kelly over the video violated his free speech rights.
The episode, to many in the DC legal community, was a watershed moment signifying Pirro’s attempts to push through the courts even problematic cases.
The grand jury rejections, which are commonly called “no true bills” in court, had happened very infrequently for past Justice Departments. Several people in the DC legal community now say they are part of a trend of jurors opposing Justice Department cases.
Hung juries and split verdicts
In the four of eight criminal jury trials this year that ended without convictions, two were declared to be mistrials because of juries that wouldn’t agree on a verdict. The other two resulted in the defendants walking free.
In January, prosecutors tried Cortney Merritts, the husband of a Democratic former member of Congress, on accusations he fraudulently obtained more than $20,000 in Covid-era government loans for his moving company. Prosecutors pointed out in the trial that Merritts had no employees on a payroll and far less income than he claimed.
Cori Bush, who left Congress last year and is running again, testified on her husband’s behalf, speaking about how she met him during the pandemic and about her service in Washington.
Merritts, testifying in his own defense, maintained he was innocent. Prosecutor Emily Miller told jurors that Merritts was “not on trial here for who he is.”
The jurors deliberated for three days, telling the judge multiple times they were at an impasse.
“Please let us know how to move forward when personal judgements have been clearly expressed and that judgement will not change regardless of any further discussion,” the jurors wrote to the judge on the third day.
The judge, Jia Cobb, declared a mistrial.
Mistrust and anger with the federal government appears to have contributed to a willingness of some of the jurors to nullify, meaning they refused to side with prosecutors to send a larger message, people familiar with the jury’s deliberations told CNN.
Yet Merritts’ defense attorney, Justin Gelfand, told CNN last week the defense strategy wasn’t aiming for jury nullification. He believed the prosecutors’ case simply wasn’t strong.
“I believe a jury wouldn’t have convicted no matter the administration,” Gelfand said.
After the verdict, the US attorney’s office asked to have the case against Merritts dismissed.
A DC federal jury also hung in December on a years-old case against Salvadoran gang members. The case is being retried by Pirro’s office beginning this week.
Then in January, a different jury couldn’t agree on a verdict in a federal narcotics- and drug-possession trial. Pirro’s office is set to retry that case in August.
At yet another trial this February, prosecutors in DC secured a partial conviction that fell short of their hopes.
The defendant, former Federal Reserve adviser John Harold Rogers, was alleged to have sent secrets from the Federal Reserve to China.
The jury, after hearing from 11 witnesses and deliberating for a day, ultimately acquitted Rogers on the more serious charge he faced, of economic espionage. Prosecutors said Rogers sent economic trade secrets over a 12-year period to contacts posing as Chinese graduate students. In reality, prosecutors say Rogers’ contacts worked for “the intelligence and security apparatus of China,” according to the indictment.
The jury still found Rogers guilty of lying in a 2020 inspector general interview when asked whether he had shared private information from the Federal Reserve. He is set to be sentenced in May.
In one of the two full acquittal verdicts this year, the politics of Trump hovered over the trial.
A Secret Service agent testified in January that a man had pointed a cat toy laser toward the president’s helicopter as it took off in September from the White House lawn, an alleged felony. A defense lawyer for the man, Jacob Winkler, argued he didn’t do it knowingly.
Federal public defender Alexis Gardner invoked the federal government’s fealty to Trump. She argued to the jury that a rookie Secret Service agent overreacted when he encountered Winkler on the street, and neither man knew where Marine One was in the air.
“The agent testified to being hyperaware that there had been an increase in political violence, that Charlie Kirk’s funeral was the next day, that it’s his job to protect Trump. In his mind, it is all things Trump. Trump is somewhere overhead. Oh, God, protect the king from this peon and this cat toy,” Gardner said in her closing argument to the DC jury.
“What the government has proven to you is that you don’t get no justice from the Department of Justice,” Gardner said.
The jury reached a unanimous verdict in under two hours. Winkler was acquitted.
The jury refusals, several legal experts in Washington told CNN, could begin to harm law enforcement’s ability to bring legitimate cases against defendants who are serious public safety threats.
“Now when prosecutors walk before a jury, this DOJ’s credibility has so eroded, the trust is so thin — and everyday cases concerning public safety are the casualties,” said JP Cooney, a longtime prosecutor in the US attorney’s office. Cooney, who is now running for Congress, was fired from the Justice Department last January following a stint as the top deputy to special counsel Jack Smith in criminal investigations of Trump.
Pirro’s office is still working on significant possible and upcoming trials.
The man accused of a hate crime for killing a young couple leaving a Jewish community event in the city last May is awaiting the Justice Department’s decision on whether it will seek the death penalty against him in DC District Court, a notoriously difficult city for federal capital trials.
The alleged shooter of two National Guard members, one of whom died, outside a busy Metro station in November is also awaiting trial in DC District Court, with prosecutors similarly seeking the death penalty.
In August, the Libyan man accused of being involved in making the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 is set to go to trial after a decadeslong pursuit by US authorities.
Pirro’s office also has an upcoming bribery trial against DC City Councilmember Trayon White. The case is now set to be tried by one of the longest-tenured white-collar prosecutors in the office.
“Oh, I can’t wait,” Pirro said to local DC TV station NBC4 in January about the impending White trial. “I expect a conviction.”
Turnover and tough cases
Some of the difficulty Pirro’s office has faced in court recently, sources say, has been compounded by a mass exodus of experienced prosecutors in the US attorney’s office.
Many were fired under Pirro’s predecessor Ed Martin, because they had worked on criminal cases against Trump supporters who took part in the US Capitol riot on January 6, 2021 — one of the largest federal law enforcement efforts in recent memory and one that consumed the prosecutors’ office.
The environment in the US attorney’s office appears to be in flux enough that Pirro, a former New York county judge herself, recently wrote to the federal district court seeking feedback on how her line attorneys were doing. She told CNN she had done so because, “any effective leader should seek feedback on how their team is performing so we can continually improve.”
Not all judges responded constructively, CNN was told by multiple sources.
Defense attorneys, however, have quietly shifted their approach because of Pirro’s middling success with trials.
“We want people to try hard cases. If the case is rock solid, the person usually pleads” and doesn’t go to trial, one US attorney’s office prosecutor who left the office last year told CNN recently. “But if I’m a defense attorney in this district, I would recommend to my client, this is an opportunity to be comfortable with losing. Because you might win.”
CNN’s Evan Perez and Holmes Lybrand contributed to this report.