 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Conventional legal fallout 02/15/01 - by Ron Goldwyn - Philadelphia Daily News The R2K Legal Collective has a 1960s feel, for those old enough to remember the '60s -- which includes hardly any current activists. The three-story building at 1524 Race St., rented from the Quakers next door, is postered and stickered with slogans both whimsical and dialectical. Fast-food scraps and sleeping bags dot the floor. "Free Mumia!" is a recurring theme; anarchist and anti-police slogans abound. Publications pile up, along with promos for fund-raising events -- one in Berlin, another for a breakfast in Old City ("Save Democracy/ Eat Pancakes"). Welcome to the semipermanent nerve center of a movement most Philadelphians assumed would be a one-week wonder: demonstrations tied to last summer's Republican National Convention, supposedly followed by mass exodus of protesters. Not so fast, Dylan breath. The legal aftermath of the convention will be with us for quite a while. It's certain to fill dockets and courtrooms for months, even years. Civil cases conceivably could tap the coffers of the city and its insurers for millions of dollars -- or those cases could provide fresh vindication for the police and convention planners. Three suits have been filed on behalf of a dozen plaintiffs by some of the city's most prominent civil-rights attorneys. But that trickle could turn into a flood, and both sides are amassing resources. In fact, the city has been bracing all along for a civil-liberties super bowl. The host committee spent almost $800,000 for umbrella insurance that specifically included coverage for civil-rights violation claims. The Law Department has hired Mark Aronchick, a highly regarded and politically connected litigator, to defend against those claims. Criminal prosecutions here have been largely unsuccessful so far. Hundreds of misdemeanor cases have been resolved, mostly by acquittal, diversion or dismissal of charges. But the first felony cases won't be tried in Common Pleas Court until early next month. That's when William Beckler faces what R2K Legal Collective members call "the criminal injustice system." Beckler, 25, from Naples, Fla., is a Columbia University Law School graduate who recently passed the New York state bar exam. He said he came to Philadelphia as a legal observer for the demonstrators as a step on what he hopes is a career path in public-interest law. He was arrested Aug. 1 while, he said, trying to get the name of a protester being arrested and cuffed at 17th and Latimer streets. He spent six days in jail and, while the most serious assault charges have been dropped, he's still charged with riot and several other felonies. Beckler said it's all trumped up, and he has a March 8 trial date with three others arrested at the site. Class action coming? Beckler spends days at the Race Street office on his own case and gathering data for an anticipated class action on behalf of the "RNC 420." That's the number of demonstrators R2K Legal Collective says were arrested. The district attorney's office says it has no accounting of convention-related cases. Cathie Abookire, spokeswoman for District Attorney Lynne Abraham, denied critics' charges that the office has prosecuted those arrested on no grounds, or has overcharged them. "We disagree with that. We don't overcharge. We charge appropriately," Abookire said. While the district attorney's office doesn't keep score, R2K Legal certainly does. In what it calls "our wins and losses," R2K Legal says 169 misdemeanor cases were thrown out and 106 defendants accepted accelerated rehabilitative disposition -- a pretrial program under which they admit no guilt and have their records expunged after probation. R2K cited 23 misdemeanor convictions, with all but three appealing to Common Pleas Court for automatic retrial. Eleven felony defendants still face trial, while 31 others had cases resolved, changed to lesser charges or dismissed. Three pleaded no contest, one took a guilty-plea bargain. For the defense Defense of the city in the civil lawsuits falls to the Law Department, City Solicitor Kenneth Trujillo and the outside counsel he has hired. Trujillo was circumspect on the city's plans. He said he knew about the three federal suits and expects more. "I can't comment very much about details of the defense except we're defending them, and we will defend them vigorously," he said. "The things I've seen so far, I really don't believe there to be any merit to them." Trujillo said it was "absolutely, absolutely untrue" that the city had planned to hold demonstrators in jail until the convention was over to stifle their protests, as many demonstrators and civil-liberties advocates have claimed. "We bent over backward to accommodate First Amendment statement," Trujillo said. "We just went out of our way to make sure people could protest." Several sources confirmed the city has turned to Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin, a small, 6-year-old firm, to handle civil cases. Lead lawyer will be Aronchick, a former city solicitor, former chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association, and recently a litigator in Florida on behalf of Democrat Al Gore's presidential recount. Aronchick declined to comment on the hiring or to discuss the cases. The city is generally self-insured against damage claims, but this time it has help. In place is a huge policy arranged by the ubiquitous David L. Cohen on behalf of Philadelphia 2000, the committee he headed that handled Republican convention logistics. "It's fairly standard for people bringing events to the city to purchase insurance," he said. Cohen said he wouldn't comment on specifics of the insurance beyond what was shown in Philadelphia 2000's Federal Election Commission filing. That shows a comprehensive policy paid Feb. 17, 2000, to Graham Co. of Philadelphia, with what Cohen termed a "significant minority component" by A V Consultants of Philadelphia. While the $777,411 premium bought an umbrella for all liabilities, Cohen said it specifically includes "coverage for civil-rights claims against the city and the state." Cohen declined to say how much civil-rights coverage the policy provides. He insisted, as he and other city leaders have said all along, that police were magnificent in their restraint, "and nothing a few left-wing lawyers are going to do is going to change that." Cohen said, "I think anyone with $120 can file a lawsuit in federal court. I continue to believe the conduct of Philadelphia police in dealing with these demonstrators was totally appropriate and I don't think the city faces any material risk from its handling of demonstrators during the convention." David Rudovsky, a veteran civil-rights lawyer who does remember the '60s, begs to differ. "A lot of things went wrong and went badly wrong. [Police] Commissioner [John] Timoney got a lot of praise at first that police didn't use rubber bullets, didn't use gas, didn't seem to use excessive force on the streets," he said. "Unfortunately in our view what the department and the city did -- who made decisions we don't know yet -- is to use other methods." Those tactics, Rudovsky said, include "a kind of preventive detention" by keeping protesters jailed until the Republicans left town, high bails for misdemeanors, and an "unconscionable" raid and mass arrest at what became known as the "puppet warehouse." "The police had no information about criminal activity of any of those people," Rudovsky said of the 70-plus arrested and jailed. All had charges dropped in what he called "false arrest and malicious prosecution." Rudovsky represents Michael Graves and Susan Ciccantelli, co-owners of the warehouse at 4100 Haverford Ave., who say they were falsely arrested and their business destroyed. His firm also represents a woman who says she was arrested at the warehouse and held for days when she stopped by to use the bathroom. Another suit is on behalf of a half-dozen volunteer medics who allege they were hassled by police and had supplies confiscated. The cases have been assigned to U.S. District Judge Norma Shapiro, but they're a long way from trial. Only the medic case, filed last summer, has begun the pre-trial deposition phase. The bigger issue Railing against the system and viewing almost everyone in jail as some form of political prisoner is the near unanimous view at R2K Legal. The staffers, mostly unpaid, are likely to have ear or nose rings, T-shirts with a message, brightly hued leg warmers, strong political views, bare feet, and some legal training. An array of bicycles sits in one corner of the first floor at headquarters. In another are foot-high cardboard skeletons on sticks, reminders of the 6- to 8-foot puppets police confiscated and destroyed after the Aug. 1 raid on the puppet warehouse. Originally, said Danielle Redden, there were 138 skeleton puppets, each to represent a prisoner executed under then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush's administration. Those puppets were proof, she said, that the warehouse was used for props for political statement, not for acts of violence or obstruction -- a likely key point in civil-rights suits to come. R2K Legal is aiming for those suits. Zeke Spier, 20, of Portland, Ore., was convicted on misdemeanor charges but has appealed for retrial April 3 in Common Pleas Court. Justice, he said, would be to "stop imprisoning poor minorities at the rate they are now." But he added: "Lives have been ruined. People deserve financial compensation." Marina Sitrin, 30, of New York, said damage claims are the only way to get the authorities' attention. "The city cares mainly about money," she said. "They hired an insurance firm knowing there would be police brutality. They knew they were going to violate due process." Redden, 23, of West Philadelphia, is a rare homegrown blue-collar R2K Legal Collective member. "I come from a very conservative Republican Catholic family," said the graduate of Cardinal O'Hara High and Villanova University. She spent seven days in jail, then had all misdemeanor charges dropped last month. Jail, she said, "radicalized me a little more." Inviting her family to her trial helped them see the legal system through her eyes. Sitrin, on the other hand, said her parents were "active in civil rights, active in the anti-war movement, active in the anti-nuclear movement. I was raised to believe that if there is injustice in the world it is your responsibility to change it." Sitrin commutes from New York to help maintain the Philadelphia collective. She's also working with left-wing legal groups such as the Partnership for Civil Justice in Washington and the Midnight Special Collective in California. The goal, she said, goes beyond demonstrating to working to empower community groups. Collective members, mostly supported on donations of friends and supporters, look at money in ways outsiders might consider unusual. "We should get restitution for the unjust enrichment the city received," Beckler said. "They claimed they got $300 million in goodwill, so if we ask $10 million, they'll still make $290 million." Beckler said he believes he was arrested because he happened to be near the area where Commissioner Timoney had been assaulted a few minutes earlier. On the evening of Aug. 1, he said he was on his bike heading south down 17th Street where he saw a man who turned out to be Shane Bastian being arrested and cuffed at Latimer. He said he asked the man his name when police whacked him on the back of the legs and pushed him down. "They stood on my body and ground my elbow into the ground," Beckler said. He said as he screamed he was put into handcuffs. He said two others "wandered onto the scene," one a demonstrator, one an off-duty lifeguard, and were arrested. All four were charged with felonies, although aggravated assault charges were later dropped. He said he spent six days in jail. Court records show all charged under the same report, which includes possessing a Roman candle, although it's not clear which defendant is alleged to have had it. Beckler said he found out in court that he had been charged with jumping "on an officer's back," which he denies. "Getting arrested, I became a full-time person working on behalf of the activists," Beckler said. Convention week was chaotic in Philadelphia, as TV screens filled with skirmishes, sit-ins, and some acts of vandalism and violence by demonstrators. On Aug. 1, police charged dozens of demonstrators with assaulting them and destroying property. They said demonstrators tried to thwart arrest and refused to give names or addresses to jailers. Police drew praise as they avoided the use of teargas or rubber bullets, or the appearance of excess force in arrests, most of which occurred Aug. 1. Demonstrators, in stories that took days or weeks to emerge to a disbelieving public, claimed they were beaten or hog-tied in custody while authorities dawdled to keep them in crowded, waterless cells for the remaining three days of the Republican convention. Police response differed from earlier mass demonstrations in Seattle and Washington, D.C. Most of those demonstrators were charged with summarylike offenses with small fines and short jail stays. In Philadelphia, those arrested faced a half-dozen misdemeanor charges that required a court appearance, often several days after arrest. Trujillo defended the charging policy. Ticketlike summary offenses, he said, are "an invitation for people to misbehave." But he added, "We didn't want to treat someone committing a felonious attack the same as nonviolent disobedience." Timoney has passionately defended and praised his men and women for their performance. He reaped nationwide headlines for what was considered at the time a well-planned and well-executed effort to keep the city calm. Lawrence Krasner, lawyer for Ruckus Society head John Sellers -- who was held on $1 million bail for misdemeanor charges, all of which were dropped -- said "There's no question a lot of lawsuits would be extremely meritorious." The payout of those suits, Krasner said, could be "in the millions." But so far Sellers, a Californian with Philadelphia roots who helps train demonstrators for nonviolent protests, has no intention of filing such a suit, Krasner said. goldwyr@phillynews.com |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fair Use Notice of copyrighted material contained in this website.