An Orange County Superior Court choose on Thursday, March 12, determined against dismissing prison charges against three folks accused of failing to observe a police order to go away a pro-Palestinian protest at UC Irvine, leaving a jury to determine whether or not regulation enforcement’s actions on the campus have been constitutional.
Attorneys for the three defendants argue {that a} police order for protesters to disperse from a campus encampment May 15, 2024, was a part of an effort by regulation enforcement and UCI leaders to shut down the protesters’ First Amendment rights, not a lawful response to violence or imminent hazard.
The three defendants — Adel Shaker Hijazi, 41; Malik Alrefai, 25; and Jacob Andrew Hernandez, 33 — are scheduled for trial subsequent week on misdemeanor charges of failure to disperse.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Eric Scarbrough didn’t weigh in on the substance of the protection argument difficult the constitutionality of the police dispersal order. Instead, Scarbrough stated that argument would doubtless be the center of their trial and needs to be determined by a jury as a substitute of a choose.
Around 50 people were charged in connection with the same UCI protest, with the overwhelming majority accused of a misdemeanor depend of failing to disperse when ordered by police. More than 40 of these defendants have already resolved their instances, most agreeing to taking part in a diversion program rather than face a conviction or time behind bars.
The 2024 UCI demonstration got here amid a wave of protests in school campuses throughout the nation associated to the Israel-Hamas struggle.
(*3*), starting in late April 2024. Protesters sought to drive the college to divest from corporations and establishments with ties to Israel and weapons producers, to assist an finish to the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and to reinvest funds towards college students and staff, amongst different calls for.
The crowd had swelled to 500 or so folks by the afternoon of May 15, when officers in riot gear from more than a dozen law enforcement agencies swept through the crowd following experiences of a small group barricading itself into the Physical Sciences Lecture Hall, which was adjoining to the encampment.
UCI leaders argued that they had exhausted all attainable options earlier than resorting to police intervention. Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer, whose workplace filed the charges against the protesters, stated on the time that “criminal activity (that) transcends peaceful assembly will not be tolerated.”
But the choices to name in regulation enforcement and to file charges against protesters have been condemned by civil rights teams and a few college members as a politically pushed effort to silence pro-Palestinian activism on campus.
During Thursday’s listening to in a Santa Ana courtroom, Alternate Defender James Henshaw, Alrefai’s legal professional, described the dispersal order his consumer is accused of failing to observe as a “sham” that was used to violate the First Amendment rights of the protesters.
There was no violence and no menace of imminent violence, the legal professional added as he famous that police waited round 2½ hours from the primary dispersal order to the arrests.
“They didn’t like the cause; they didn’t like the attention,” Henshaw stated. “The police and UCI administrators wanted to shut this down.”
Deputy District Attorney Matthew Bradbury instructed the choose that there was proof of violence or potential violence that led officers to problem the dispersal order after which to make arrests. The prosecutor instructed the choose that he had officers on the courthouse Thursday prepared to testify and body-worn digicam footage readily available. But the officers didn’t finally take the stand Thursday and the footage was not proven.
Along with arguing the police order was unconstitutional, Hernandez’s legal professional can be arguing that Hernandez was overlaying the protest as a contract reporter and due to this fact was lined by state legal guidelines exempting journalists overlaying a protest from failure to disperse charges. The choose held off on weighing in on that argument Thursday.
A jury trial for Hijazi, Alrefai and Hernandez is at present scheduled for subsequent week.
