Meck DA dismisses three 2020 protest cases

Three defendants who had misdemeanor charges from protests in 2020 had their cases dismissed on September 13th.

Taylor Marshall, 29, Nolan Strout, 26, and Julia Grainger, 28, were arrested during demonstrations decrying the murder of George Floyd in August 2020. Over 200 protestors were arrested during those demonstrations in Charlotte.

Marshall, Strout and Grainger, represented by attorneys Tim Emry and Xavier T. de Janon, all had appearances Tuesday afternoon at the Mecklenburg County Courthouse.

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An assistant district attorney informed Emry and de Janon that their clients’ Strout’s charges of misdemeanor simple assault on government officials in the line of duty were dismissed “in the interest of justice.”

The defendants were accompanied by friends and family for moral support. Twenty-seven others still await trial. Some are still awaiting their first appearances before a magistrate.

Charlotte Drop the Charges is a group of 2020 George Floyd protest defendants and their attorneys, Emry, de Janon, Habekah Cannon and Dominique L. Camm.

The group held a press conference outside of the district attorney’s office last Wednesday publicly calling for District Attorney Spencer Merriweather to dismiss all low-level misdemeanors that came out of the 2020 protests.

Long-awaited dismissal

Defense attorney Habekah Cannon represents some of the remaining defendants with outstanding charges.

“What’s really problematic,” she said, is that she and other attorneys have reached out to the district attorney’s office about pushing these low-level offenses forward.

“After discussing with the assistant district attorney and pointing out there is insufficient evidence, they’re still insisting on going forward,” Cannon said.

In the two years since these charges were first filed, Cannon said her clients have lost housing and employment due to the pending charges.

The DA’s office has been combatting a backlog of court cases caused by closures during the Covid-19 pandemic. First-level assistant DAs, Cannon said, don’t have the authority to override the DA’s policy of reviewing cases involving violence, even if they’re simple-assault.

“It can be something as simple as a contact with no injury,” she said. Cannon said these procedures continue to waste the county’s time and resources. “It’s insulting to have an assistant DA tell you the day of trial, ‘I can’t prove the case,’ knowing that you couldn’t prove it two months ago.”

Cannon and her colleagues have reported that police reports from the 2020 demonstrations are incomplete, blank, or “copied and pasted.” There was no report and the reason for arrest line was left blank for Grainger’s arrest record. Without this crucial information, no one can verify whether the alleged charges have any substantial evidence.

Because so much time has passed since arrests were made, Cannon said officers are relying on their own personal knowledge to testify. On Tuesday, an officer involved in one of the cases didn’t even show up to court.

Kettling and class-action lawsuits

Grainger suffered two instances of aggression from police in 2020. Though she doesn’t necessarily agree with the messaging behind “peacefully protesting,” she said the demonstrators were not destroying property or threatening the police.

On the evening of August 23^rd, bicycle police were trying to herd demonstrators out of the street uptown. Grainger, who was in the crowd, said “they were trying to get us to go faster,” but because they were behind her, she couldn’t see them approaching. Grainger was hit from behind by an officer on a bicycle and was run over. She got up and continued to march because “I do my best to not stop me from what’s important.”

Shortly after midnight, she was in a much smaller crowd near the Spectrum Center. According to Grainger, CMPD officers ordered the crowd to disperse while they corralled demonstrators toward a wall.

“We were trapped with nowhere to go,” she said. The scene was “chaos” and “terrifying” as people in the crowd became fearful and screamed. Grainger described “people with guns and using bikes maliciously shoving you back into a corner.”

Grainger was near the front of the group, where she was impacted by another officer’s bicycle. She estimates at least five officers whom she believes were all men her height (six feet) proceeded to pepper sprayed and tackle her to the ground. She broke into hives that lasted a week and still suffers from chronic knee pain.

Later, Grainger said she was loaded into a golf cart that took her to a parking lot. She does not recall being informed of any of the officers’ names or what she was arrested for. To this day, the officer Grainger supposedly assaulted has not been named.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s use of force on protestors in 2020 resulted in numerous civil lawsuits , including by the ACLU. Kettling is a tactic in which officers herd protestors into a small area with no exit before firing rounds of pepper balls and tear gas into the crowd.

These incidents drew national attention. CMPD was already facing disciplinary action for its use of teargas and kettling techniques before the incident Grainger described.

The State Bureau of Investigations determined the crowd did have two exits from the area, though obstructed by smoke. Superior Court Judge Bell denied a request for a preliminary injunction against the police department. By September 2020, CMPD stopped using teargas.

Why did it take so long?

An official with the DA’s office said that prosecutors have been working to address the court backlogs since 2020.

The DA’s office is prioritizing “violent crimes” in Superior Court, where felonies are prosecuted. Priorities for the District Court are misdemeanor domestic violence cases, DWIs, misdemeanor assaults, and weapons-related offenses.

Despite the traumatic events, Grainger is relieved to know her charges were dropped. Still, though, she is concerned for the remaining 27 defendants awaiting trial or dismissal.

“Every single morning for two years, I woke up and thought, ‘is today the day I lose my job?” Her partner wasn’t working at the time, so her work as an administrative assistant had to support both of them. She knows others aren’t as fortunate. She spoke of people that had to move out of the state because the charges impacted their ability to get stable housing and employment.

“As horrible as the situation was for me, I know that because of my privilege, my whiteness and my class status, it’s not the worst of what’s happening,” she said. “Our vulnerable community members, Black femmes and trans siblings that marched with us are truly dealing with the brunt of this and repercussions today, two years later.”

“The assistant DA had all the same information for the past two years,” Grainger said, “and for the past two months with my lawyer has been pushing for dismissal. She did not get any new information, so why was she so unwilling to dismiss it?”