WASHINGTON—On Tuesday, Oct. 13, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., who chairs the House Oversight Committee, escalated his attacks on Home Rule in the nation’s capital when he launched an investigation into Free DC and Harriet’s Wildest Dreams over the jury nullification political education courses the two groups have been offering to the public.
Comer claims that educating the public about their rights as jurors is an effort to “subvert lawful prosecutions” in the District of Columbia by “blatantly facilitating the violation of the constitutional right to an impartial jury.”
Though he doesn’t say so directly, Comer is clearly irritated that Jeanine Pirro, Trump’s U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, has failed to secure convictions in a string of high-profile cases.
These include the acquittal of the former Justice Department employee who threw a Subway sandwich at a federal agent; the felony case against a former Olympian accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after he touched a piece of its peeling coating, which Pirro’s office dropped and a judge has since dismissed with prejudice; and, most recently, the mistrial in Councilmember Trayon White’s bribery case, in which the jury reportedly split 9-3 in favor of acquittal.
Those courtroom defeats are partly the product of the political education led by Harriet’s Wildest Dreams and Free DC. Above all, though, they reflect D.C. residents stepping up to do their civic duty: taking part in jury selection and voting their conscience when cases go to a jury trial. As has become apparent, the public does not want to see the mass arrests carried out under the federal and military occupation turn into the mass imprisonment of their neighbors.
Jury nullification occurs when a jury returns a “not guilty” verdict even though the evidence may show the defendant broke the law, because jurors believe the law itself is unjust or that applying it in a particular case would be.
The power rests on two longstanding features of the American legal system: jurors cannot be punished for their verdicts, and the Constitution’s ban on double jeopardy means an acquittal cannot be appealed or retried. Courts, however, have held that judges are not required to tell jurors they have this power.
The practice has deep roots in struggles against unjust laws. In the decade before the Civil War, Northern juries repeatedly refused to convict people charged under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 with helping freedom seekers escape bondage. In 1973 a New Jersey jury acquitted the “Camden 28,” Catholic anti-war activists who had raided a draft board office.
The power has cut the other way, too. In the Jim Crow South, all-white juries acquitted white defendants accused of killing Black people, including the men who murdered Emmett Till in 1955. For advocates of today’s juror education efforts, that history is exactly why it matters who sits in the jury box.
Free DC, in partnership with Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, has led the defense of D.C. Home Rule since the start of Trump’s second term, mobilizing thousands of D.C. residents, many of them taking action for the first time. It is not surprising that their local strength has caught the attention of MAGA Republicans, who have been planning a full takeover of D.C. and the elimination of Home Rule since 2025.
Comer also criticized Free DC’s fiscal sponsor, Community Change, for being financed by “left-wing dark money groups that fund other radical entities conducting jury nullification workshops.”
Comer has never been a friend to D.C. residents during his time as Oversight chair. He recently sponsored a bill, backed by DoorDash, that would strip the District of its ability to raise revenue and collect taxes, effectively gutting Home Rule. He has also held bad-faith show trials of D.C. elected officials over the District’s supposedly high crime rates, drawing strong pushback from local residents.
It is clear that he is intimidated by the emerging pro-D.C. movement that is propelling a new progressive delegate to Congress, a socialist mayor to city hall, and a large progressive bloc to the D.C. Council. Free DC is also turning out dozens of residents to canvass in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District to defeat Rep. John McGuire, known to critics as “MAGA McGuire,” who is trying to codify Trump’s occupation of D.C.
For the organizers behind the trainings, teaching residents about their rights as jurors is a question of who gets to sit in judgment. Working-class people, particularly Black workers and Black youth, are the main targets of the criminal legal system, and advocates argue that a fair trial means facing a jury of one’s peers drawn from one’s own community. They see Comer’s investigation as part of a broader effort to keep ordinary people out of the courtroom and out of the jury box, just as D.C. residents have begun to use it.
To supporters, jury nullification is one of the few tools working people have to push back against mass incarceration, one verdict at a time. With Pirro vowing to retry White and cases from the occupation still moving through the courts, D.C.’s juries look set to remain on the front lines of the fight over who governs the city.
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