This is the good outcome; one note I had about this though is, per CNN:
In one video taken from a police officer’s body-worn
camera, Dunn told the officer, “I was trying to draw
them away from where they were. I succeeded.”
Don't say things like this! He was acquitted of assault, but he admitted on camera to a violation of 18 USC 111. (How I know this is, a friend of mine who's a trustee for our suburb was just indicted for the same thing, not over a sandwich, but for slowing down an ICE employee's car).
> He was acquitted of assault, but he admitted on camera to a violation of 18 USC 111.
In this specific case we are discussing, he actually was charged with (and acquitted of) a violation of the provision you reference 18 USC § 111, which is a misdemeanor when done by simple assault [0], after the US Attorney failed to convince a grand jury to indict for a felony violation.
I'm just saying, my friend and trustee has been indicted for putting his hands on a slowly moving ICE vehicle, on the premise of it impeding the driver of that vehicle (by some matter of seconds) from pulling into a parking lot, so mouthing off about pulling DHS people from one location to another seems like a bad idea. This is one of those situations where an axiomatic derivation isn't going to get you past the CourtListener indictment link I'll just post if I need to.
Like all civil disobedience, it occupies an awkward middle ground. You don't necessarily want to make prosecutors' lives easier, but your protest is a lot more powerful if you make it clear to the world that you really did violate the law, because then anyone who supports you has to acknowledge that the law is unfair.
If a random person throws a sandwich at you, or touches your shoulder for example to say "mind the gap", it is indeed assault under the law. Whether it rises to the importance of requiring legal sanction is, however, up to the jury.
Merely touching people is not unlawful. Intent and context are critical and your example falls well below any sort of threshold for harassment or violence.
