 selected writing Pittsburgh G-20 Legal Update: Report for Rustbelt Radio
Rustbelt Radio is Pittsburgh Indymedia's weekly radio program featuring news from the grassroots, news overlooked by the corporate media. Rustbelt Radio is broadcast live from WRCT studios every other Monday at 6PM on 88.3FM in Pittsburgh, airing again the following morning at 9AM. Rustbelt Radio can also be heard weekly on WNJR-Washington 91.7FM, FRSC Free Radio Santa Cruz 101.1FM, and online at radio.indypgh.org. COPYRIGHT: USE AS NEEDED WITH CREDIT TRANSCRIPT In October 2009, several people arrested during the Pittsburgh G-20 summit, who were charged with Disorderly Conduct and Failure to Disperse, had their first round of court appearances. On March 1st and 2nd, another round of court dates were scheduled, including appeals. Legal aid lawyer Eileen Yacknin represented three clients arrested in Schenley Plaza on the final night of the G-20: “All of my clients were charged with Disorderly Conduct. They had originally been charged with Disorderly Conduct and Failure to Disperse but the Failure to Disperse charges in all these cases had been dismissed at the preliminary hearings that were in October. Most of the people at the Plaza were pushed into the Cathedral lawn where they were all arrested.” Between the October and March hearings, the State dropped the Failure to Disperse charges, allowing the courts to deal with the remaining Disorderly Conduct charges as “Summary Offenses”, similar to petty misdemeanor charges in other U.S. states. Thus, hearings were taking place before a single judge. Independent journalist Melissa Hill was arrested in Schenley Plaza on the final night of the G-20 and returned in March for the second time to Pittsburgh to appeal her remaining charge of Disorderly Conduct: “Disorderly Conduct is one of the offenses that Pennsylvania law allows them to actually drop to a Summary Offense. It’s one of the ones that they have a little more flexibility about what they can do with it, so judges can convict people of Disorderly Conduct.” Hill had been videotaping the peaceful gathering when she was arrested: “I was volunteering with Twin Cities Indymedia and I was filming around the evening of Friday, September 25th, near the Cathedral of Learning on the University of Pittsburgh campus and I was basically arrested within a larger group of people, and charged with Disorderly Conduct and Failure to Disperse. And during that time my camera was broken and my footage was also taken. I went through the entire process of basically being booked and being detained and having National Guard people standing over you. All this really weird stuff.” One characteristic of police testimony, from the beginning of the court process, was the repeated assertion that there were “protests” in the Plaza on the Friday night. As lawyer Eileen Yacknin noted: “Nobody was protesting. First of all there was no protest rally at all. It was just a gathering of mostly students. Many of them just happened to be there. Yet the prosecution characterized them totally as protesters totally as a way to—I believe—influence the judge’s decision with the idea that it is wrong somehow to protest. And, in fact, I certainly heard it at the other trials but I think this judge also said ‘You shouldn’t have been there. You had no right to be there.’ And that has been an increasingly common attitude of these judges, that people don’t have a right to assembly, which of course is the right that is protected by the Constitution. So if you don’t have a right to assembly then it’s your fault if you get arrested for assembling and I think that’s an increasing attitude of the courts.” One problem with the dropping of the Failure to Disperse charges was that the State’s evidence still seemed to be mostly related to that charge, and not the sole remaining charge of Disorderly Conduct. Under Pennsylvania law, a person commits Disorderly Conduct if he or she causes "public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm" by "creat[ing] a hazardous or physically offensive condition." The prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Kevin Chernosky, therefore made the convoluted case that "[F]ailure to disperse from the area ... is enough" to warrant being a "hazard". Hanging the original case on the premise that one’s mere presence is “evidence” of Disorderly Conduct, much of the police testimony consequently focused on providing experts in the Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, a combination high-powered loudspeaker announcement system and less lethal riot control sound weapon, first deployed against American citizens on the streets of Pittsburgh during the G-20. Testimony centered around the range of the dispersal device and the content of its recorded announcement, the English version of which is heard in this recording from the Laurenceville neighborhood on Day 1 of the G-20: “By order of the City of Pittsburgh Chief of Police, I hereby declare this to be an Unlawful Assembly. I order all those assembled to immediately disperse. You must leave the immediate vicinity. If you remain in this immediate vicinity, you will be in violation of the Pennsylvania Crimes Code no matter what your purpose is. You must leave. If you do not disperse you may be arrested and/or subject to other police action. Other police action may include actual physical removal, the use of riot control agents and/or less lethal munitions which could cause risk of injury to those who remain.” However, reliance on a recorded announcement meant that no specifics were given as to where to disperse, an issue unsuccessfully raised by several defendants during the trials. Melissa Hill reported one exchange that took place during the March 1st cases: “Officer Frieberg went up there. The judge asks where the people are supposed to disperse to, and Frieberg says ‘Jail’. That’s all he says, ‘Jail’. [laughs] When they are focusing on the LRAD and the Failure to Disperse charges I wasn’t as confident because the day before, they focussed a lot on that. There were people convicted basically on the Failure to Disperse causing a disorderly condition. And so I was not that confident in front of the judge until my attorney really I think did a good job of focusing it just on Disorderly Conduct and what I was particularly doing.” Hill’s attorney, Glen Downey, successfully argued that police evidence relating to Failure to Disperse was irrelevant to the charge of Disorderly Conduct, citing a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling concerning a prison riot that established that mere presence at an event at which Disorderly Conductis occurring is not considered sufficient evidence of disorderly conduct: “The Commonwealth’s only evidence today was about Melissa’s Failure to Disperse charge. They had no evidence on the record of her Disorderly Conduct. That was my argument to the judge and the judge bought it, so Melissa’s appeal was sustained and all charges were dismissed.” Despite the defendants from day 1 of the hearings being in exactly the same position as Hill, the judge had found them guilty. Melissa Hill reported: “At the other court hearing, the arresting officer would say, ‘hey, I never saw this person do anything’, so the idea was that it would be pretty hard to convict someone of Disorderly Conduct unless you saw them doing something disorderly." It is therefore likely, after Hill’s successful case, that those who lost their cases the previous day will now take advantage of this new route to lodge appeals. Meanwhile, the State’s is doing everything it can to frustrate G-20 defendants’ rights. Pittsburgh City Paper reporter Marty Levine, who has been following the G-20 trials closely, reported that the Pittsburgh Citizen Police Review Board’s hearings about G-20 police procedures are being stymied by the police department’s unwillingness to release documents to the board. In the March 11th edition, Levine wrote: Common Pleas Judge Stanton Wettick has yet to rule on a March 8 hearing in which the city sought to block CPRB access to any police documents not related to G-20-related complaints from individuals. This report was compiled from original interviews and research. For more information about police repression during the G-20, and in particular police actions in the Schenley Plaza/University of Pittsburgh area, watch the independent documentary DEMOCRACY 101, available online in the Documentaries section of the RNC ’08 Report, found at rnc08report.org. 
more from this section  • RNC 8 back in court for hearings (Monday, May 10th, 2010)  • Pittsburgh G-20 Legal Update: Report for Rustbelt Radio (Monday, March 15th, 2010) • The 2010 Olympics and Repression of Independent Media: Report for Rustbelt Radio (Monday, February 15th, 2010) • Israel & the Goldstone Report: Report for Rustbelt Radio (Monday, February 1st, 2010) • Egypt and Gaza: Report for Rustbelt Radio (Monday, January 18th, 2010) • Press Release: G-20 Summit Leaves Pittsburgh, Questions About Freedom In America In Its Wake (Sunday, September 27th, 2009) • From St. Paul to Pittsburgh: Citizen Media is Not a Crime (Monday, September 21st, 2009) |
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