Court grants protesters delay to prepare cases

By Sue Lindsay, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published August 29, 2008 at 3:24 p.m.
Updated August 29, 2008 at 3:24 p.m.

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Denver County Court changed its process in the middle of hearings this morning to allow protesters who came to court to postpone their return court dates to October so they won’t have to stay in Denver until next week.

Judges at first remained adamant that they could not divert from a process set up to handle mass arrests from the Democratic National Convention that required them to come to court Tuesday to get a trial date if they pleaded guilty.

“This is the process and I am going to follow it,” Judge James Breese told the group of about 25 protesters who came to a special session of the court this morning thinking they could plead not guilty and come back to court in October.

The protesters had been called by court staff and some said they had recorded messages that indicated they could “reset” their cases. Instead, they were told they could only plead guilty to resolve their cases and not have to return next week. The hearings are called “disposition/reset” hearings.

Breese apologized to protesters who may have misunderstood.

But attorneys made mounting objections to the process, which is unusual and peculiar to the protesters arrested during the DNC. Attorneys were told they could not appear next week on behalf of their clients.

Denver lawyer Robert Corry said one of his clients was a “bystander” arrested for making a call on his cellphone when a police officer told him to stop.

“This is a violation of his first amendment rights,” Corry said. “It’s ridiculous. It’s an outrage and a huge, huge inconvenience to these people to make them come back to court next week. They are here now. We all are here now.”

Corry and other attorneys said they expected the city attorney to dismiss some of the cases once the facts are reviewed.

Several other county judges arrived in the courtroom to observe, and they conferred with Breese during a recess. Then the city attorneys and defense attorneys were called into chambers.

After about 10 minutes, court reconvened and Breese announced that the process had been adjusted so that people who came to court today could reset their cases to return in October.

A cheer went up in the courtroom, which was quickly called back to order.

“This is an excellent change,” said attorney Brian Vicente of the People’s Law Project after the hearing. “The court system has shown it can be reasonable. I commend Judge Breese on this decision. They’ve done the right thing.”

Earlier, Vicente had objected to the process, particularly since there weren’t that many people arrested in the demonstrations.

“It does seem like an attempt to coerce people to plead guilty today, “he said before the procedure was changed. He also said a number of people pleaded guilty when they were first seen in court early Tuesday morning without seeing lawyers. “That’s not fair,” he said.

A handful of protesters did plead guilty today to put their cases behind them.

“A lot of them already don’t have much faith in the system in general,” said Jacob Sternberg of Oakland, Ca. “We’re not necessarily surprised by the lack of justice. For those people, a guilty conviction is not an insult. It’s like being called a thief by a murderer. They don’t mind having a conviction for disobeying a cop.”

Several protesters decided to keep their Tuesday return dates.

Judge Breese kept court open until 1 p.m. so that anyone who pleaded guilty because they thought they couldn’t get the October date could withdraw their pleas.

Before the hearing, Anthony Hall of Amherst, Ma. said he pleaded guilty because h had to get back to school.

“I pleaded guilty to obstruction and aI only did that because I’m already in debt and I’m a college student,” he said “I need to get back to work and school starts Tuesday.” Like many others arrested Monday, Hall said he never heard a police order to disperse.

After the hearing concluded, the protesters jumped up and down and hugged each other as they left court.

“There won’t be anything going on in October,” Sternberg said. “By then we’ll have letters of apology from police.”

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