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Jury appears deadlocked in case of Occupy protesters
Closing arguments wrapped up on Friday in the trial of 12 Occupy Philly activists who spent the afternoon of Nov. 18, 2011, occupying a Center City Wells Fargo Bank location in protest of the bank's lending and foreclosure practices. But by the end of the day today, the jury still had not reached a verdict in the case and appeared to be deadlocked.
Jury appears deadlocked in case of Occupy protesters
Closing arguments wrapped up on Friday in the trial of 12 Occupy Philly activists who spent the afternoon of Nov. 18, 2011, occupying a Center City Wells Fargo Bank location in protest of the bank's lending and foreclosure practices. But by the end of the day today, the jury still had not reached a verdict in the case and appeared to be deadlocked.
According to Dustin Slaughter, one of the defendants, Judge Nina Padilla told the jury they'd have to keep trying to reach a verdict for at least as long as it took for the case to be tried, which could mean they'll be in the jury room through Wednesday if they can't come to an agreement.
The 12 defendants are charged with defiant trespass and conspiracy to commit defiant trespass, misdemeanor charges that could add up to fines, probation or jail time — a maximum of two years per defendant. Most or all of the 11 men and one woman had initially been offered participation in the District Attorney's Accelerated Misdemeanor Program (AMP), designed to divert nonviolent cases from the court and prison system, according to Larry Krasner, one of the senior attorneys on the case (which a team of seven lawyers has taken on pro bono). The 12 opted to go to trial and were found guilty in Municipal Court last June.
After that, some defendants changed their minds and asked the DA to allow them to participate in AMP. The DA refused, the say: Hence, the weeklong jury trial in Common Pleas Court.
Some defendants didn't bother to hide their feelings the trial was absurd. Take this exchange between Assistant District Attorney Jim Stinsman and defendant Larry Swetman:
Stinsman: "Did you think you had permission [to be at the bank]?"
Swetman: "I believe my First Amendment was my permit. … I took the fact that the bank was open … there was a waiting area for me to wait in."
Stinsman: "Is that what you were doing? Waiting?"
Swetman: "Waiting on the world to change, I suppose."
Krasner points out even the civil affairs officer who was at the scene took the stand to say he "not only respected the defendants but he, quote, admired them. He hugged one of them on the way into court." Which is, to understate the matter, not the norm in criminal courtrooms.
"To me, it's astounding that they're occupying a courtroom for an entire week to prosecute these people," Krasner says. "This is a courtroom where the judge routinely has really serious cases, gun-point robberies and things like that. And instead of prosecuting those cases, the DA is prosecuting these people for saying things about Wells Fargo Bank that were true."
District Attorney Seth Williams, meanwhile, has laid out his stance on the case fairly assertively — on Twitter of all places. He tweeted: "If you don't leave an establishment you are protesting u can get arrested, accepting the punishment is part of civil disobedience" and "people can't intentionally break the law 4 publicity purposes & then hope to benefit by telling me to prosecute others."
Yet, if the jury's confused, it's not hard to see why. The defense argued that the 12 had a First Amendment right to express their views, that they had reasonable due justification to speak against an immediate and great harm (ie. Wells Fargo's lending practices), and that the jury has the legal ability to acquit based on nothing more than testimony of the defendants' good character, based on the court decision Commonwealth v. Neely.
On the other hand, Stinsman did an admirable impression of an Occupy "mic check" to convince the jury that the problem was not the content of the defendants' speech but their means of communicating — that is, disrupting the bank's business. If they had been Eagles fans shouting "Mic Check: We are the people of Philadelphia and we are not leaving this bank until Andy Reid is fired," he insisted, the legal repurcussion would have been the same.
Slaughter, however, says that in this case, the medium was the message, as it were. And he's glad that message is being heard. "We're excited that we're able to bring this case about Wells Fargo to a jury of our peers in Philadelphia. It's not just a judge, it's people who, whether they realize it or not, have been impacted by this bank's policy."
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