As they waited for jurors to return a verdict, the lawyers were on edge.
Rebecca Abel and Kyra Nickell, both deputy federal public defenders, had spent days in trial defending their client, whom the government accused of assaulting a federal law enforcement officer with a camera and later with a shove to the chest during an immigration protest in downtown Los Angeles last August.
There was the pressure of securing justice for Isaias Lopez, 28, who they argued had pushed the officer in self-defense, after he walked into Lopez’s camera and then shoved it back toward him. Lopez faced up to eight years in prison if convicted.
And there was the pressure of keeping up an unprecedented winning streak against prosecutors, who have charged more than 100 people since June, alleging assaults on agents or interference with immigration enforcement. The federal public defender’s office in Los Angeles was 5 and 0 against the U.S. attorney’s office, winning every one of these cases brought to trial in the Central District of California, highly unusual for the perpetual underdogs.
They hoped Lopez’s case, which went to trial last month, would be No. 6.
“It’s normal to feel pressure for any trial, for any client. We want them to win, that’s why we’re bothering to take it to trial,” said Abel, who helped secure an acquittal for a client in the second protest case that went to trial. “But certainly in these cases, because, until this point, we had won five of them, the sixth one feels like we don’t want to ruin it for the team. … It’s more just an internal sense of, like, ‘We can do it, it’s possible.’”
Historically, the odds have been stacked against federal public defenders.
Fewer than 1% of federal criminal defendants were acquitted throughout the U.S. in fiscal year 2024, according to the latest available statistics from the federal judiciary. The majority of federal cases result in guilty pleas and never go to trial. Prosecutors often pursue the most serious charges available, seeking leverage to negotiate plea agreements with defendants who may plead guilty in order to avoid the risk of a lengthy prison sentence.
But in L.A. and across the country, some defendants charged in connection with protests and immigration enforcement operations have opted to go to trial. There have been acquittals in Chicago, Seattle and D.C., including the widely ridiculed case of a man charged with assault for throwing a Subway sandwich at a Border Patrol agent.
In a system where acquittals are statistical outliers, experts say the federal public defender’s office’s recent wins raise questions about prosecutorial decision-making and the credibility of cases being brought.
Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches at Loyola Law School, said traditionally the conviction rate by the U.S. attorney’s office is around 90%.
“This is the exact opposite of that. That’s a pretty clear message that there’s problems with these cases, that they’re not resonating with juries. The juries represent the community and either there’s problems with the credibility of the case or the case in general,” Levenson said.
“There are lots of crimes you can charge in this district, but continuing to charge crimes that result in acquittal is like banging your head against a wall and doesn’t make anything better or safer and you have to ask: Why?”
As of this month, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A., 23 people have pleaded guilty to assault, impeding and other charges and another 23 have had charges dismissed. About 40 defendants are slated to go to trial this year.
A spokesperson for the office did not respond to a request for comment on the string of trial losses.
Federal Public Defender Cuauhtémoc Ortega said as far as his office is concerned, the cases “should not have been brought.”
“The evidence doesn’t support a conviction and we took them to trial not just because our clients wanted to vindicate their rights, but because we wanted to vindicate their rights as well,” Ortega said.
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Federal officers arrested Lopez on Aug. 8 as he captured photos of an anti-ICE protest outside the Metropolitan Detention Center.
Lopez, who has documented other protests over the years, told The Times that on that particular night he was using his Sony a7 IV, a professional camera worth thousands, to capture the expressions of federal officers facing off against protesters.
As he reached the end of the line of officers, he said, one of them “ran into my camera and tried to use that as a pretext to assault me violently.”
“I responded out of fear and confusion and pushed to distance myself from my attacker,” he said.
After the push, Lopez said, he was violently thrown to the ground and then arrested. When Lopez first met Abel over video call, his wrists and legs were chained to a stool.
“I’m innocent, I didn’t do anything wrong,” Lopez told Abel. “Why am I here?”
“The government has been pursuing these cases, you’re not alone,” Abel told him. “Don’t worry, we’ll get through it.”
The flurry of federal charges began soon after protests against immigration enforcement operations broke out last June. Some were charged with very serious offenses — including hurling a Molotov cocktail at Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies or throwing cinder blocks at federal law enforcement — but others faced prison time for minor skirmishes.
At a June news conference, Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in L.A., promised to come down “with a really heavy hand.”
“We are looking at hundreds of people,” Essayli said. “We’re going to take our time, we’re going to identify them.”
Federal public defenders, who represent individuals unable to afford counsel, suddenly found themselves swamped with cases.
The overwhelming majority of defendants in federal criminal cases in 2022 did not go to trial at all, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. About 9 in 10 pleaded guilty, and 8.2% had their case dismissed at some point in the judicial process, Pew found, citing data from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
Only five criminal defendants were acquitted in the Central District of California in fiscal year 2024, according to statistics from the federal judiciary.
“Acquittals anywhere are pretty rare and especially in a succession like the one we’ve seen lately,” Ortega said. “We do get acquittals in our office, but the difference here is that we’ve never had a back-to-back string in the same general subject matter. That’s unusual.”
Ortega said the office has more aggressively taken these cases to trial “because we see weaknesses in how they’re charged and we see defenses there.”
“The success we’re having is not random, we’re all working together to figure out how to go after these cases and win them,” Ortega said.
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The government’s losing streak at trial began months before Lopez found himself in a downtown courtroom.
Brayan Ramos-Brito’s case was the first to go to trial in September. U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino testified that he witnessed Ramos-Brito strike a Border Patrol agent during a June protest.
The jury came back with an acquittal after a little over an hour of deliberations. A juror who spoke to The Times outside the courthouse said Bovino’s testimony had “no impact” on their decision.
Ortega, who cross-examined Bovino, said it was that verdict that signaled to him that something had shifted.
“I personally thought, OK, these cases are going to be difficult for the government to win, if top ICE brass is testifying and it’s not credible enough for a jury,” Ortega said.
In the ensuing months, deputy public defenders secured an additional three acquittals for defendants charged with assaulting federal officers. Among them was the case of Alexandria Augustine, accused of assaulting a federal officer with an umbrella. An investigator for the office testified that she had to use a special scale to weigh the umbrella, because it was less than a pound.
The office, which has handled every case that’s gone to trial so far in the district, also secured an acquittal for a client charged with stealing government property by towing an immigration agent’s vehicle.
Last month, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said on X that recent legal defeats in Los Angeles were the result of “mass judge and jury nullification, deep in blue territory, of slam-dunk assault cases against federal law enforcement.”
Ortega pushed back on the claim of jury nullification — where jurors acquit even though they think prosecutors have proved their case — pointing out that Miller “wasn’t sitting in the audience watching the evidence and the testimony being received.”
“I would find it hard to square the argument that there was jury nullification with the evidence that was presented at trial, which caused the jury to find for the defendant.”
Ortega added that the wins have “solidified a sense of community and a sense that we’re all a team,” and “done great things for our morale.”
“The sense of relief you get from knowing your client’s story has been vindicated, they’re not looking at custody time and a conviction, that makes you feel proud and it reminds you why you wanted to be a public defender in the first place,” Ortega said.
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The office’s latest trial, that of Lopez, played out over several days last month.
Abel, a supervising deputy public defender, and Nickell, both tasked with Lopez’s defense, were no strangers to protest-related cases. Nickell handled another where the client took a plea deal; Abel won the umbrella trial and had two that resulted in guilty pleas.
Many clients take pleas, Abel said, because of fear “of the unknown.” Some clients, she said, have family members who are undocumented “and they are worried that if they don’t plead guilty, it will draw unnecessary attention to them.”
Lopez said continuing with his case took a significant toll. He said he agreed to be laid off from his job as a metallurgical technician because of the days he would need to miss while in court.
“It’s a prison in a sense outside the prison,” Lopez said. “It takes a toll on someone’s psyche. I felt like I was under a microscope by the federal government.”
But he had reason to hope. His defense team was accustomed to winning at trial. Abel, who has been with the office for eight years, has lost at trial only once, in a split verdict — guilty of one charge, not guilty of the other. Nickell, who has been with the office since 2024, secured an acquittal in the first trial she handled.
During the trial, Abel and Nickell introduced videos that their team had tracked down, showing the federal officer seemingly walking into Lopez’s camera and then shoving it back toward him. They told jurors that the officer’s “excessive force” resulted in a large cut on Lopez’s hand that drew blood. The defense lawyers acknowledged that Lopez pushed the officer back but argued it was in self-defense.
Assistant U.S. Atty. Rahul Hari told the jury that Lopez “did not act in reasonable self-defense.”
“This wasn’t about protecting himself, it was about getting even,” Hari said.
In her closing argument, Abel said Lopez was the one attacked, not the other way around. The officer, she said, “could not stand being photographed, could not stand when someone did not immediately bend to his will.” She displayed a slide to jurors that read: “Bully with a badge.”
“The truth is what you’ve seen with your own eyes in the videos the defense has shown,” Abel said. “When Mr. Lopez tried to protect himself from an advancing, angry officer, he became the one accused. The truth is, Isaias Lopez is not guilty.”
After hours of deliberation, and at one point requesting that testimony be played back, jurors reached their verdict on Jan. 29. Lopez, Abel and Nickell sat expressionless as the clerk read it aloud.
“Not guilty.”
Lopez’s mother, seated in the front row of the gallery, burst into tears. Lopez immediately turned and embraced his attorneys.
“You’re free,” Abel told Lopez.
“I’m free,” he said.