A D.C. judge on Thursday threw out the Reflecting Pool vandalism case against former Olympic canoeist David Hearn for good. Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman dismissed it “with prejudice,” which means the Justice Department can’t ever charge him again for the same thing. His reason was unusual. He said the risk came from the president.
Prosecutors had already admitted the case was wrong. In late July, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro asked to drop it after the Interior Department turned over records showing the damage to the pool came from a botched installation by the contractor, not from Hearn. What Edelman decided Thursday was whether to leave the door open. He shut it.
What was David Hearn accused of?
Hearn, 67, paddled for the U.S. at the 1992, 1996 and 2000 Olympics. He was arrested June 19 and later indicted on a felony destruction-of-property charge. Prosecutors said he “violently” damaged a two-square-foot piece of sealant in the newly renovated pool. The charge carried up to 10 years in prison.
Hearn’s account never changed. He told The Washington Post he reached into the water to touch a piece of liner that was already coming loose, because he wanted to know what it felt like.
Then the government’s own paperwork caught up. In her July motion, Pirro wrote that Hearn had been indicted on “less than fulsome information” and that the damage was the result of “flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings,” in a rush to finish before the America 250 celebrations. Her office dropped charges against Hearn and three other people at the same time.
Why did the judge say the case can never come back?
Normally, when prosecutors drop a case, they ask to do it “without prejudice” so they keep the option to refile. That’s what the government asked for here. A dismissal with prejudice is rare, and judges grant it only in what the law calls exceptional circumstances.
Edelman found them in the president’s posts. After Pirro moved to drop the case, President Trump said she “choked” and “folded like an umbrella.” In an early August post he wrote that she “should re-visit her hastily made decision,” adding that the “‘gentleman’ involved is a big player in ActBlue,” the Democratic fundraising platform. One of Hearn’s lawyers is Norm Eisen, a longtime Trump critic.
The judge wrote that the case should be closed permanently in large part because of the “political pressure brought by the President of the United States upon his subordinate officers.” He said Hearn “faces the unique possibility that the government will revive this case,” one the government “has already announced to be meritless.”
[The government] has no right to retain the ability to compound the errors it has already made.
Judge Todd Edelman, D.C. Superior Court
Hearn’s legal team called the ruling “a victory for the rule of law and for an innocent American seeking justice.” The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
What’s happening with the Reflecting Pool now?
It’s still broken. The pool got a multimillion-dollar new blue lining this summer. It was drained after the Fourth of July and remains empty and fenced off for repairs, NPR reports, with no public timeline for when it’ll be finished.
We covered the early, louder version of this story in August: whether a vandalized pool was a national crisis or political theater. The answer turned out to be neither. It was a construction defect.
The BeezLoop Take
The ruling isn’t really about a pool. A judge looked at a criminal case the government itself called meritless and decided he couldn’t trust the government to leave it alone, because the president kept publicly demanding a prosecution and naming the defendant’s political donations as a reason. That’s a remarkable thing for a court to put in writing, and the fact that it was the most reasonable reading of the record should bother people no matter who they vote for.
Credit where it’s due on one point: Pirro’s office did the right thing in July. It read the Interior documents, admitted the indictment was built on bad information, and dropped it. That isn’t easy for a prosecutor, and she took a public beating from her own boss for it.
But the bigger failure came first. A 67-year-old man was arrested and indicted for a felony that could have carried a decade in prison, over damage the government’s contractor caused, before anyone checked the installation. Three months later the pool is still empty, and the people who paid the price for that work were Hearn and the three others who got charged over it.
The open question is whether this becomes a template. If presidential pressure is enough to persuade a judge that prosecutors can’t be trusted with an ordinary dismissal, defense lawyers in other politically charged cases will start asking for the same thing.
Also on BeezLoop: Trump blamed ‘vandals’ for the dead grass at his own July 4 event site.
Sources: NBC News · CNBC · NPR via WCBE · CNBC, July 31
