Alamance prosecutor dismisses charge against journalist arrested covering BLM march

A journalist who was arrested last fall while covering a march to the polls in Graham that ended in a cloud of pepper fog no longer faces a criminal charge.

The Alamance County District Attorney’s Office on Wednesday dismissed a resisting, delaying or obstructing a police officer case against Tomas Murawski, a senior reporter with the Alamance News.

Murawski was one of 153 journalists arrested or detained at a social justice protest since a Minneapolis police officer was recorded pressing his knee into George Floyd’s neck, killing him on May 25, 2020, and reigniting the Black Lives Matter movement, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

Over the past year, Graham has become the site of one of the most persistent protest movements in the United States. Demonstrators were met with an aggressive police response, leading to dozens of arrests and several lawsuits alleging that Graham and Alamance County authorities violated the U.S. Constitution. News & Observer journalists are among those who have been threatened with arrest.

The nationwide norm is that police or prosecutors quickly drop charges against journalists, whose newsgathering is protected by the First Amendment, said Sarah Matthews, senior staff attorney with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, on Friday in an interview with The News & Observer. That’s what happened last week in Elizabeth City when police handcuffed two journalists with the USA TODAY network. They were never formally charged.

Yet Murawski’s charge stemming from the Oct. 31 march in Graham remained pending for nearly seven months. Fewer than 10 journalists across the country still face criminal charges related to the past year’s protest coverage.

Lingering charges against journalists can have a chilling effect, Matthews said. “It sends a message to journalists that they could face criminal charges for many months, and potentially even have to stand trial, simply for doing their job,” she said.

In November, the Reporters Committee and a coalition of 26 media organizations, including The News & Observer, sent a letter to Graham Police Chief Kristy Cole and Alamance County District Attorney Sean Boone asking that the charge against Murawski be dropped.

The letter noted that video did not support the allegation that Murawski jerked away from an officer who was trying to move people out of the road. Murawski was photographing Graham officers making an arrest when he was taken into custody. An officer twisted Murawski’s arm behind his back, prompting nearby protesters to gasp and yell, “What are you doing?” at the officers.

‘Never should have happened’

Boone, the district attorney, told The News & Observer on Friday that the dismissal was the result of an agreement struck “earlier this spring” between his office and Murawski’s attorney.

“If Mr. Murawski did not receive any similar charges over a reasonable span of time we would take a dismissal in this case,” Boone wrote in an email. “He has always been a zealous but respectful reporter in his engagements with law enforcement and the court system, and this charge was out of character for him. We are satisfied with the resolution in this matter.”

Todd Allen Smith, Murawski’s attorney, was not available on Friday to provide comment.

Tom Boney Jr., the publisher of the Alamance News, said that the dismissal was “a victory, but not terribly satisfying because it never should have happened in the first place.”

Boney said he was not aware of an agreement between Murawski and local prosecutors.

Boney, himself, was threatened with arrest in the past year. Alamance County deputies hauled him out of a courtroom in December after he challenged a judge’s decision to deny his request for a hearing on whether it was appropriate to block journalists from covering cases related to the local Black Lives Matter movement.

The U.S. and North Carolina constitutions give members of the public and the press the presumed right to attend criminal trials. In a landmark decision on the issue in 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court noted that secrecy breeds distrust while openness helps to combat misconduct. Journalists often stand in as a proxy for the public, bringing information about what happens in the courts to an audience far beyond those able to be in the courtroom.

After Boney’s near arrest, the Alamance News, The News & Observer and Triad City Beat asked the North Carolina Court of Appeals to order the Alamance courts to let journalists in. The local courts then revised their media access guidelines and required journalists to ask for permission to attend a court hearing.

Boney would like to see that system jettisoned, given the newly relaxed COVID guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

“I find this offensive,” he said, “though an improvement over being handcuffed and hauled out of a courtroom.”

This story was originally published May 28, 2021 at 2:32 PM.