The government's case against the rest of the J20 defendants remains a threat to the First Amendment.
The defendants had been arrested in Washington on Inauguration Day when police corralled more than 200 people, many of them demonstrating under the banner of âDisruptJ20.â The government eventually charged hundreds of people in connection with a small amount of property damage committed by a few individuals. Prosecutors sought to use a novel approach to group liability in the case to charge the defendants with an array of crimes â a tactic critics of the prosecution have said runs the risk of criminalizing dissent and poses a threat to the First Amendment...
The J20 defendants had been arrested amid large protests of hundreds of thousands of people that descended on Washington on January 20. Throughout the day, protesters suffered abuses at the hands of the Metropolitan Police Department. Police indiscriminately pepper-sprayed crowds of protesters with Super Soaker-like dispensers. Riot cops flung stinger grenades into crowds of marchers, journalists, and legal observers. Some 234 people â among them those who were eventually charged in the J20 trials â were caught in a police line and arrested, despite local law in Washington specifically discouraged the use of the controversial mass arrest technique, known as a kettling.
The arrestees were trapped in the kettle for as much as nine hours, pushed against each other, and covered in painful pepper spray. They were denied food, water, and access to bathrooms. Those arrested included protesters, medics, legal observers, and some journalists. A handful were let go. Most were charged with a single count of felony rioting. Over 130 defendants signed on to âpoints of unity,â which insisted on the political nature of the charges and refused to accept cooperating pleas. When the majority of the defendants refused to plea, the U.S. attorneyâs office returned a superseding indictment which charged 212 defendants with eight felonies, carrying a maximum sentence of 75 years in prison.
In the following months, some of those charges were reduced to misdemeanors and a few were dismissed. But the defendants in this case continued to face 50 years in prison for attending a protest â until today.
At every step of this prosecution, critics have said, the government has relied on undermining core principles of the American justice system that posit individualized suspicion and individualized punishment. Instead of identifying and arresting the handful of individuals breaking windows, the police indiscriminately arrested a crowd. Instead of individually charging those who engaged in criminal behavior, the state charged some 212 people â holding the entire group responsible for the acts committed by a select few. Yet liberal jurisprudence is supposed to hold as a fundamental value that individuals are responsible for their own concerted acts.
âTodayâs verdict reaffirms two central constitutional principles of our democracy: first, that dissent is not a crime, and second, that our justice system does not permit guilt by association,â said Scott Michelman, a senior staff attorney with the ACLUâs Washington, D.C., chapter, in a statement applauding the verdict. âWe hope todayâs verdict begins the important work of teaching police and prosecutors to respect the line between lawbreaking and constitutionally protected protest.â
