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 Legal Updates 10/31/00 Update from: R2K Legal Court Update Wednesday October 25th This was the first day of RNC trials. The first one was a felony remand - he had had his felony charges dropped to high misdemeanors in his preliminaries. Most felony remands have been assigned to Rm. 603 Judge Seamus McCafferty. As many of you are well aware Judge McCafferty was a cop for 2-3 yrs prior to becoming a judge. Therefore, our defendant was found guilty of misd. assault and other misd. charges and sentenced to 30-60 days in prison, 2 yrs probation. He filed for automatic appeal and will go to jury trial. The defendant's sentencing was accompanied by a 5-10 minute speech about how the judge has many friends who died in the Vietnam war to protect our right to free speech and how cops put their lives on the line everyday to protect our rights, etc. You get the picture. The second trial was for a defendant who had low level misdemeanor charges and had not been consolidated into a larger group. This case was tried in Rm 806 Judge Kirland - who, from my observations and the observations of the lawyers is a fair judge. The defendant's case was thrown out because of lack of evidence presented by the prosecution.Their cop showed up, but it turned out he knew nothing of the defendant. Thursday October 26th Two misdemeanor defendants who for some reason were not consolidated before were consolidated. A defendant who had been issued a summary plea bargained for community service and expungement of any record of the summary offense. Motions were argued for selective prosecution in regard to the School of the Americas cases in front of Judge DeLeon in Rm. 506. There were motions filed in regard to selective prosecution in all cases, however they were to argue each consolidated group individually. The SOA cases were the first to be argued and it was decided that for all other "street" cases (consolidated groups that were not in the warehouse or in a van) the arguments in regard to selective prosecution may be made immediately following municipal court trial. What selective prosecution means is that the defendants were targeted because the issue they were protesting. Our lawyers showed video tape of an anti-Mumia rally that took place in South Philly at the same time as the other protests and noted how those at the rally were in the street blocking traffic and instead of being arrested they were accommodated by the police. Also witnesses called to testify included a union organizer who described how at union protests they rarely have a permit, often block traffic and are accommodated by the police. (He also noted that if anyone is arrested they are issued summary charges that are usually promptly dropped). Judge DeLeon said he would rule on Monday. Friday October 27th A felony remand was rearranged on his previous felony charges because prosecution claimed they made a mistake and called the wrong cop to testify at the preliminaries. A high level misd assault case went to trial in front of Judge Merriweather. She testified. Her charges were dropped to summaries and she was given $100 fine. However, the judge gave her a long lecture, mostly pertaining to her not being from Philadelphia and how he wanted her to leave town as quickly as possible and not return. Two more low level misds were consolidated. Monday October 30th Selective prosecution motion in regard to SOA cases was granted (see a GIF of the judge's ruling). Tuesday October 31st Two low level misdemeanor defendants went to trial in front of Judge Kirkland. Their case was thrown out because the cop never showed up to testify. Tomorrow The four defendants of the 300 S. Broad Group go to trial along with another defendant who was not consolidated. In Solidarity, R2K Legal |
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