Produce the Fence or Drop the Charges! - Stop the Witchhunt Flyer #4

On Tuesday, May 18, at 1PM, there will be an antiracist picket at the courthouse in downtown Ann Arbor. At that time the Ann Arbor Antiracist Defense Campaign, the National Women's Rights Organizing Coalition (NWROC), and Anti-Racist Action (ARA) will deliver well over 6,000 petition signatures to Washtenaw County prosecutor Brian Mackie’s office demanding that all the charges against the 20 antiracists be dropped.

At 1:30PM, the ten antiracist felony defendants will have a hearing on the question of whether each defendant will be allowed their own trial.

witchhunt, n. A political campaign launched on the pretext of investigating activities subversive to the state. Houghton Mifflin 1995.

witchhunt, n. search for witch(es), (fig.) search for suspected Communists or other persons with unorthodox views. Oxford University 1976.

witchhunt, n. an intensive effort to discover and expose disloyalty, subversion, dishonesty, or the like, usually based on slight, doubtful, or irrelevant evidence. Random House 1980.

At 3:15PM the same day (5/18), the misdemeanor defendants, ten of whom are accused of having damaged a rental fence during the protest of the KKK rally, will have a hearing on their motion to drop the charges on the grounds that the only physical evidence in their cases was destroyed with the authorization of the police before any of the charges were brought.

The police and prosecutor’s office are claiming that the fence was damaged, but the police department never made any assessment of the condition of the fence. The fence company made a casual and entirely cursory assessment of the fence. Knowing they had a standard blank-check insurance policy from the city for any assessment of material loss – they had a financial incentive to bend the stick in the direction of assessing damage. No record was ever made of the alleged damage by either the police or the fence company.

The police then allowed the subject of these charges to be scrapped and melted down, leaving only the bill from the fence company as "evidence" of damage.

This bill is now the lynchpin of ten misdemeanor charges. The fence company, of course, could have no notion that the bill they wrote up on the basis of this cursory assessment of the condition of the fence would later be the central piece of evidence in criminal charges against ten people. Now the company has a vested interest in maintaining the position that the fence was damaged.

Police photographs of the fence after the rally, still images secured from police video, eyewitness affidavits of neutral observers, including several Peace Team members, and an expert witness affidavit from the owner/operator of a fence company who viewed the fence in question on multiple police videos all indicate that there was no damage done to the rental fence. In fact, the Peace Team re-erected the fence after it was pulled from the poles by the counter-demonstrators.

Below is a quote from the introduction to the defendants’ Motion to Dismiss the Charges on the grounds that the only physical evidence in the case—the fence itself—has been destroyed. The legal defense team submitted this motion on November 17.

"There is, however, an even more weighty obstacle to proceeding with these cases than the demonstrable innocence of the accused.

The police authorized the removal and allowed the destruction of the decisive and the only piece of physical evidence -- the subject of the alleged crime itself -- the chain link fence. Without the fence there is no case.

The police made no record of the damage they allege; no video, no still photographs, not so much as a leaf from a police notebook is to be found in the police reports that document the damage that defendants are alleged to have caused.

It is bad faith for the police to pay the fence company to remove and destroy the very subject of charges and yet continue to pursue prosecution.

While facing nonexistent evidence is a daunting prospect for the defendants, we should think that the nonexistence of the evidence presents supplementary difficulties for the prosecution in a modern court of a democratic society as well. […]

Not only does the nonexistence of the physical evidence make genuine, searching evaluation impossible for a future jury, it makes independent investigation impossible for the defendants.

Justice, common sense and law dictate the impossibility of proceeding without this evidence."

The prosecutor of the felony cases is aiming at a show trial by filing a motion that – if granted by judge Donald Shelton – would deny each defendant their own trial. In doing this, the prosecution is demonstrating its lack of concern for the due process rights of the defendants. The show trial and show trial atmosphere that the prosecutor is aiming at would be inherently unfair. One of the fundamental rights in a democratic society is the right to a fair trial on the facts.

In the motion to consolidate the misdemeanors, the prosecution showed their real attitude toward consolidation of these cases. The entire substance of the motion was a tirade about the supposed political associations and beliefs of the defendants – which are wholly irrelevant to the applicable law and to the allegations. This kind of show trial would be a travesty of justice; it must not be allowed to happen.