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There, he and four other staff members pored over every single word in the criminal code, a sort of guidebook for the legal system, which describes what constitutes a crime, defines how that crime should be labelled, and determines the allowable punishment. He’d descend into the basement of one of those buildings and settle in a small, windowless room.

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Criminal Code Reform Commission, it was a chance to do something “really big and important.”Įvery workday, Park travelled to a neighborhood of beige, boxy government buildings and courthouses known as Judiciary Square. When he was offered a position with what is now called the D.C. case that required him to parse the difference between “driving while intoxicated” and “operating while intoxicated.” He realized that these seemingly small distinctions could significantly alter a criminal sentence. Court of Appeals, he had worked on a D.U.I. During a clerkship for a judge on the D.C. He had hoped to find one in public policy, but he was also fascinated by the nuances of legal language. In 2013, Park, five years out of law school, was looking for a job. As he and his colleagues watched their work get upended by the toxic mythmaking that has come to characterize national politics, they found themselves wondering: How could this happen? And how could we have been so naïve? “It was shocking to see it play out this way,” Jinwoo Park, the lawyer in charge of the effort, told me recently. This spring, at the very end of that process, the whole thing fell apart, explosively. A group of legal scholars and advisers, nominated by local lawmakers, have been revising the District’s century-old criminal code.

has been trying to come up with a solution. “But that’s what happens.”įor more than sixteen years, D.C. “Do we have a system that results in swift and certain justice for a relatively low-level assault case? The answer is absolutely not,” Brian Schwalb, the District’s attorney general, told me the other day. Why? In the nation’s capital, owing to a mix of strange politics and unusual circumstances, there is no statute that defines assault. Perez Hernandez was initially found guilty, but last year an appellate court sent the case back to trial. But, in the courtrooms of D.C., the case remains, to this day, unresolved.

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In a TV courtroom, Steve Harvey might’ve dispensed justice in a few minutes. It didn’t matter, prosecutors argued-the playful touch was an assault on its own.

When the case went to trial, he denied using the bottle, and a partial cell-phone video of the incident showed the men fighting with no Guinness in sight. Tarawallie called the police Perez Hernandez was arrested and charged with assault. Then, according to Tarawallie, Perez Hernandez smashed the beer bottle on Tarawallie’s head. Perez Hernandez-feeling slighted, perhaps-playfully touched Tarawallie’s arm again. A friend, Winston Perez Hernandez, who was drinking from a large bottle of Guinness, tried to console Tarawallie-he touched him on the arm and told him to be thankful that he hadn’t placed any bets on the game.

Tarawallie was rooting for Brazil, his favorite team, which got walloped by Germany, 7–1. Alimamy Tarawallie had invited a group of men to his apartment, in the Fort Totten neighborhood of Washington, D.C., to watch the World Cup semifinals.

Nine years ago, two friends got into a fight.