A judge on Thursday officially tossed out a case the Justice Department brought against former Olympian David Hearn, whom they had accused of feloniously vandalizing the Reflecting Pool earlier this summer.
Judge Todd Edelman stopped short of barring prosecutors in Washington, DC, from being able to revive the same case against Hearn in the future, as his attorneys had asked. The judge asked for more arguments over that request before he made a decision on it.
The formal dismissal comes nearly a week after prosecutors in the US Attorney’s Office in DC acknowledged in a court filing that President Donald Trump’s $14 million renovation of the Reflecting Pool was “hasty and botched” and that there wasn’t evidence to support their assertion that Hearn had criminally damaged it.
“Davey Hearn is innocent and today’s dismissal reflects that simple fact. But this case never should’ve been brought in the first place. The Department of Justice’s decision to seek an indictment was a miscarriage of justice,” lawyers for Hearn said in a statement on Thursday.
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