Jurors in Sandwich Thrower Case Found Charges ‘Bunch of Baloney’

Federal prosecutors hung their case on a piece of onion and a mustard smear, and that the Customs and Border Protection agent struck by a foot-long Subway sandwich was the victim of an indefensible attack.

But when the jury began deliberations, they focused on the videos and photographs shown during two days of testimony: the sandwich, they noted, was never unwrapped. So how could any of the sandwich’s insides have struck the agent?

The agent kept two souvenirs he received from fellow agents teasing him after the incident. The jurors wondered: What true victim keeps a memento of their assault?

“It really came down to this whole thing was a bunch of baloney,” said one of the jurors, a 26-year-old Washington architectural designer.

Two of the 12 jurors who found Sean Charles Dunn not guilty of assault last month gave insider accounts of the deliberations after Judge Carl J. Nichols, who oversaw the trial in Washington, last week granted a request by Bloomberg Law to release their names.

The jurors spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation from the Trump administration or the president’s supporters.

The Aug. 10 sandwich throw immediately became a symbol of resistance against Trump’s crackdown on crime and National Guard deployment in the nation’s capital. Prosecutors sought to indict Dunn, a former Justice Department worker, on a felony assault count, but a grand jury rejected that, leaving prosecutors to downgrade the charge to a misdemeanor.

The jurors, in the interviews, spoke of how seriously they took their assignment, despite the lightheartedness of the matter after details of the sandwich assault became public. Then, as the trial progressed, the jurors said they became frustrated that the federal prosecutors invested time and resources in a case that was described to them as an assault on a law enforcement officer.

“We were watching federal prosecutors go after a man who threw a sandwich. We had to give it respect to make sure we were making the right choice,” said the second juror, a 39-year-old technology worker.

The prosecutors and the federal agent, Gregory Lairmore, told the jury about the contents of the sandwich striking Lairmore, with the mustard allegedly staining his shirt and a piece of onion striking his vehicle.

Then the jurors noticed in the videos that the sandwich was wrapped before Dunn threw it, and still wrapped after it landed. “It was obvious it was never opened,” the architect designer said.

Another point jumped out to the jurors. The agent admitted to Dunn’s attorney, Sabrina Shroff, that his co-workers gave him a stuffed plushie in the shape of a sandwich. Lairmore also said his colleagues gave him a magnetized “felony footlong” icon of a man holding up a sandwich. Lairmore said he kept the stuffed plushie and attached the magnate to his lunchbox.

‘Yup, It Was’

On Nov. 3, dozens of prospective jurors were called into the US District Court for the District of Columbia courtroom. The panel was initially told they would be hearing a case about an assault that occurred in Washington, DC in August.

“I immediately thought to myself, what if it’s the Subway sandwich guy case,” the architect designer said. “And yup, it was.”

Attorneys rarely dismiss prospective jurors who have seen previous media coverage about a case. Instead, attorneys inquire whether the jurors can set aside what they think they know and focus on the evidence presented.

Both sides made their opening statements a day after the jury was picked. After two days of testimony and evidence, the jury began deliberations that Wednesday afternoon.

The jury was made up of nine women and three men. The panel also included a college professor, a retired federal worker, and a professional, stand-up comedian, both jurors said.

When the jurors finally retired to the jury room to begin deliberations, “I told everyone I would be out of there within 20 minutes,” the technology worker said. “That didn’t happen.”

Instead, it took seven hours over two days.

Forcible Assault

On the first day, the jurors spent about two hours discussing the case, until one who questioned Dunn’s guilt said she needed to sleep on her decision, the two jurors said.

The next day, two jurors who questioned Dunn’s guilt asked for more information about the definition of forcible assault, an element of the charge on which they had to agree to find Dunn guilty.

“Two jurors believed the officer was assaulted,” the tech worker said. “They said they would have been offended if someone threw a sandwich on them. But we reminded them, this wasn’t about being offended. We were ruling on the charges. Was it forcible assault on a federal agent? The forcible part was the issue. How much force was used.”

Jurors waited two hours before prosecutors answered their assault question. They then deliberated another three hours. They discussed the power of force, when it came to a sandwich. “I was literally thinking if it was toasted, would it hurt more or not,” the tech worker said.

“The only reason we got to a verdict is because we treated it with a sense of seriousness that at times I did have difficulty doing,” she said. “We tried to remain serious. We needed to respect other people in the room who generally wanted to talk about it.”

Unlike most juries that take an initial vote at the beginning of deliberations, to get a sense of where they stood, the jurors only took one vote— the one to acquit.

“We lived through Jan. 6,” the tech worker added. “We know what assaults on an officer look like.”

The case is United States v. Dunn, D.D.C., No. 1:25-mj-00138, 11/7/25.