Robert Hannah, photo courtesy MPD

At-large D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson today sent a letter to acting U.S. Attorney Channing Phillips urging him to “please reconsider and proceed to trial” with Robert Hannah, the man accused in the beating death of Tony Hunter. Hannah has reportedly been in talks to reach a plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Mendelson, who is the chairman of the D.C. Council’s Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary, wrote:

As you know, I have expressed concern previously about the decision of the USAO to prosecute the charge of misdemeanor assault for this incident. I share the view of others that the victim did not provoke his demise. However, in our July 24th conversation you stressed that the evidence will support the charge once the facts are known. Further, in your July 22nd e-mail to the co-chairs of GLOV (which you shared following our conversation), you expressed the expectation that “once the evidence is presented at trial, the community will have a better and more complete understanding of the case, and how the grand jury reached its decision.”

Although your office has a version of events based on the evidence, the better version is the one that results from the adversarial process of a trial, whereby the evidence is tested. Proceeding with a trial renders a more complete and accurate version of what happened.

Hannah had already had the charges against him reduced from a felony to misdemeanor assault, and his assertion that he only beat Hunter, a gay Maryland man, to death because Hunter sexually assaulted him before the attack has stirred up a lot of controversy. A friend of Hunter’s who was with him at the time has maintained that Hannah’s actions were unprovoked.