Escalating a standoff with federal prosecutors, a judge in Washington on Thursday formally declined to accept an indictment against a man whose case he said had morphed into an “unprecedented workaround” of the normal system of justice.
The highly unusual rejection came from Judge Zia M. Faruqui, a magistrate judge, who refused to accept an indictment that prosecutors secured from a local grand jury in Washington only after a federal grand jury had declined to indict the man on the same charge.
It represented the latest turn in a remarkable stand by Judge Faruqui, who has accused federal prosecutors of executing an “end run” around the normal course of justice.
And it came as federal grand juries have repeatedly declined to indict people ensnared in President Trump’s campaign to boost arrests and prosecutions in Washington.
Federal prosecutors have asked the court’s chief judge, James E. Boasberg, to override Judge Faruqui in the case and allow them to forge ahead.
“The government demanded that this court accept its extraordinarily unusual indictment without any further scrutiny, insisting not only that the indictment was lawful but that this court lacked the power to even consider its legality,” Judge Faruqui wrote in an opinion explaining his decision.
But the court’s rules, he wrote, “do not permit this court — much less require it — to approve of the facially invalid grand jury indictment that the government has proffered.”
The case in question involves a man named Kevontae Stewart, who was arrested on Sept. 17 after local and federal authorities approached him seated in a Jeep in Southwest Washington. In court filings, prosecutors said officers approached the car after smelling marijuana, whereupon Mr. Stewart fled, dropping a handgun. When officers then arrested him, they found a bag containing a “white rocklike substance” that later tested positive for cocaine, according to a criminal complaint.
But a federal grand jury declined to indict Mr. Stewart on charges of being a felon in unlawful possession of a firearm. Rather than abandon the case or bring it before another federal grand jury, prosecutors then took the charge to a local grand jury in the District of Columbia Superior Court, where they secured an indictment.
Judge Faruqui bridled at that move and harshly criticized prosecutors for attempting it. During a hearing on Thursday, he told prosecutors that “what is requested here has never happened.”
“I am not a rubber stamp, as frustrating as that may be to the government,” he said.
In the written opinion issued on Thursday evening, he nonetheless invited the government to go back through standard channels and bring the charges before another federal grand jury. He hinted that they had sought a path of less resistance after losing confidence in the strength of the case.
“At any time, the government can short-circuit this dispute by taking their federal charge before a federal grand jury,” he wrote. “The question, then, is why are they now afraid to do so?”
At the hearing, Judge Faruqui struck a sympathetic tone while speaking directly to Mr. Stewart, explaining that because his otherwise pedestrian criminal case had probably evolved into something bigger than him, he might now spend many more days in court.
“You never thought you’d be in this position,” he said coolly to Mr. Stewart. “I didn’t, either.”
But he said that even such a drawn-out process was preferable to blindly accepting indictments that the federal grand jury had previously failed to return.
The tug of war with Judge Faruqui has infuriated federal prosecutors, drawing a sharp rebuke from Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, who last month accused him of overstepping his authority.
Judge Boasberg declined to intervene in the matter previously, noting that Judge Faruqui had not yet decided whether to accept the indictment.
Judge Faruqui, who served as a federal prosecutor for more than a decade before joining the bench, has in recent weeks taken a dim view of Mr. Trump’s crackdown in Washington.
In an order in a separate case on Thursday, he faulted federal and local authorities for swarming and arresting a Black man in a Trader Joe’s store after observing him looking at their vehicle and grabbing the upper strap of his satchel to move it out of their line of sight. The authorities detained the man but then dismissed the case against him.
“Adjusting a backpack is neither a crime, nor does it give rise to reasonable suspicion of one,” he wrote. “Elementary-school experience and the case law support that.”
Judge Faruqui on Thursday agreed to expunge the man’s arrest record.
“Arresting and jailing someone requires careful forethought, not belated afterthought,” he wrote. “Perhaps this rush to charge regardless of the legality of the arrest helps explain the ‘unprecedented’ rate at which the government has recently dismissed cases.”