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Jury acquits an activist of convention-related assault
03/16/01 - Philadelphia Inquirer
An activist was cleared yesterday of charges that he attacked a police
officer during last summer's Republican National Convention.
A Common Pleas Court jury acquitted Matt Berghs, 19, a freshman at the
University of Indiana, who had been charged with aggravated assault on a
police officer. The jury made its decision after less than two hours of
deliberation despite the eyewitness testimony of Police Commissioner John
F. Timoney, who identified Berghs as the attacker arrested at 15th and
Locust Streets on Aug. 1, the most tumultuous day of protests during the
convention.
Shawn Nolan of the Defender Association said Berghs testified during the
two-day trial that he was running from police and that he, not the police
officer, was the one who was assaulted. Nolan offered the jury photos of
his client with bruises, he said. "I knew the police had it wrong all
along," Nolan said.
Nearly 400 demonstrators were arrested after they blocked streets and
brawled with police during protests coinciding with the convention, which
ran from July 31 to Aug. 3. Fifteen police officers -- including Timoney -
were injured and more than 20 city vehicles damaged on Aug. 1, when
protests dissolved into isolated riots and sometimes-violent clashes with
police. The arrests resulted in only about a dozen convictions, all for
misdemeanors.
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