Judge to hear arguments in RNC protesters' case

[struggle4progress]

BY KAREN FREIFELD
STAFF WRITER
January 21, 2005, 8:45 PM EST

A State Supreme Court judge has set a March hearing on whether the city should be held in contempt of court for detaining protesters for more than 24 hours during the Republican National Convention despite the judge's orders that they be released or arraigned.

Justice John Cataldo on Friday set the hearing for March 28.

On Sept. 2, the final day of the convention, Cataldo issued eight orders requiring the city to release about 560 protesters whose names had been obtained by civil rights lawyers. The protesters had been held more than 24 hours, with some detained more than 50 hours. <snip>

Lawyers for the protesters contend the authorities detained them longer than the 24-hour legal limit to stop them from demonstrating until President George W. Bush accepted the party's nomination and left town, as attorney Daniel Alterman put it Friday in the Manhattan courtroom. <snip>

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/crime/nyc-prot0122,0,974967.story?coll=nyc-manheadlines-crime


Judge Sets Deadline for Decision on Documents in Protest Arrests
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: January 22, 2005

A State Supreme Court justice said he would decide by Feb. 14 whether to allow lawyers for protesters at the National Republican Convention to force the city to turn over documents they say are central to their case.

In a hearing before Justice John Cataldo in State Supreme Court in Manhattan yesterday, the protesters' lawyers argued that they should have the right to review the documents, which include arrest logs, court records detailing arraignments and memos from city agencies, like the New York Police Department, that planned for arrests.

The lawyers say the documents will help reconstruct what happened during the week of the convention, when 1,806 people were arrested. Some were held longer than the 24 hours allowed by law, and Justice Cataldo ordered the city to arraign them or release them. When it did not comply, the city was held in contempt of court.

Yesterday's hearing was a step in a legal process that will decide whether the city was in contempt. The city faces fines of about $1,000 per protester. <snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/22/nyregion/22protest.html


Broader Inquiry into RNC Detention?
by Collin Campbell
January 21, 2005 — <snip>

More than eighteen hundred people where arrested during the Republican National Convention and many were held in a detention center on a Hudson River pier for two days or longer even after a judge had ordered their release. <snip>

The city's Law Department hasn't commented on the hearing. Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg praised the NYPD for its handling of the protesters.

http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/43020

[paineinthearse]

1. Those _#*$_#)$#_* activist judges

One never hears the freepers and rethugs complaining about the complicit reactionary judges freiendly to their cause.

Find them in comtempt, file civil suits for abuse of power and unlawful restraint, and disbar them (after due process, of course).