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Indybay Feature

DA Drops Charges Against First Round of Antiwar Protesters

by mark
Legal Update on SF M19 & M20 arrests.
The DA dropped all charges against all seven of the antiwar protesters (and IMC reporter) arraigned this morning at San Francisco's Hall of "Justice," including two with broken bones due to outrageous police brutality. "Completely illegal" is how the protesters' lawyer describes the SFPD's mass detention and arrest of antiwar demonstrators exercising their rights to protest an insane and out of control war. The protesters arraigned today were arrested on March 19 and 20 and originally charged with various misdemeanors and traffic infractions. Two protesters targeted for felony arrests are next in line for arraignment, on Thursday, March 25 at 9 a.m., 850 Bryant Street.

If you have an eyewitness account or photographic/video documentation of instances of police abuse on March 19th and 20th, contact Rachel Lederman with the National Lawyers Guild at (415) 282-9300 or rlederman [at] 2momslaw.com
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by Harris
That is pretty significant. Scanning through the newsbox papers and TV coverage yesterday, the only story about the protests on Saturday focused on DA Kamala Harris and how she was going to take special care to not let anyone off, and not to drop charges on anyone when they could be convicted. She just won the election over Terence Hallinan on this point.

So what this means is that the police don't have evidence, or forgot to gather evidence. I'm fuzzy on how long of a period police would have to wait between ordering everyone out of the street, and then surrounding and fairly arresting them. It was quite fast on Saturday, less than a minute. Given that it is illegal to jaywalk, perhaps the police would technically be able to arrest anyone outside of a crosswalk, including people trying to get in vehicles and double parkers. Anyway, this means that despite their strong urge to make an example of the girls arrested, they don't have a case.

The media completely failed on reporting the fact that the vast majority of those arrests last spring, including mine, were of people walking down the sidewalk, and not violating any law including jaywalking. Instead, they acted like DA Hallinan was a liberal simp who sympathized excessively with the protestes.
by AP
This is sort of sad for the charges. I think I've seen worse general domestic violence, or even in school fights where police aren't called: Seven of the anti-war protesters arrested in San Francisco on Saturday got some encouraging news today, as prosecutors dropped two cases altogether and asked that five more be dismissed pending further investigation.
District Attorney spokeswoman Debbie Mesloh explained that the seven individuals brought before Superior Court Judge Gail Dekreon this morning were among 80 people arrested near Fifth and Market streets when a splinter group broke away from the larger march and afternoon rally at Civic Center.

For two other individuals, however, a more serious legal pathway has been laid out, since they are both facing felony prosecution. Mesloh said Brian Wickenhiser is accused of "lynching,'' or trying to free a person who's in police custody, while another protester is accused of assaulting an officer by kicking the officer with a steel-tipped shoe.

Both felony cases, which allegedly occurred an hour apart on Saturday afternoon, are expected to land in court on Wednesday.

Altogether, 124 people including 19 juveniles were arrested between Friday's downtown protests of U.S. military action in Iraq and Saturday's much larger march. District Attorney Kamala Harris has said she wants to review each case before proceeding but has not yet said how many prosecutions will result.

Last year, close to 2,000 such cases stemming from massive anti-war protests were first downgraded to citations and then dismissed.


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