UNC pro-Palestinian protester wins 1st Amendment case. DA drops charges against others.
Six pro-Palestinian protesters had their charges dismissed Friday in Orange County court after one argued a UNC encampment at UNC-Chapel Hill was protected by the First Amendment and witnesses in the other cases could not be found.
In all, 36 people were cited with trespassing or arrested on additional charges after police from several UNC system campuses broke up a pro-Palestinian encampment. Their attorney, Gina Balamucki, said they were exercising a constitutional right to protest in a public space.
On Friday, Orange County District Court Judge Samantha Cabe dismissed charges of trespassing and resisting arrest filed against Charles Soeder, the first protester to go to trial. Others accepted plea bargains to have their charges eventually dismissed.
Balamucki argued that the encampment did not block pedestrians or disrupt campus operations, and did not pose a safety risk to university property or the public. University officials acknowledged the protest was a free- speech activity in their order to disperse, she said, and had stated earlier that the Polk Place quad was “a public forum ‘open to all.’”
The order to remove the encampment vaguely referred to people entering classroom buildings overnight, she said, but did not say how that violated university policy or differ from the normal use of campus buildings, such as using toilets.
“Every person has a right to resist an unlawful arrest” and protesting or criticizing an officer is not obstructing, hindering or interfering with that officer’s duties, Balamucki also noted in Soeder’s defense.
In a statement Monday, Balamucki and attorney Jaelyn Miller said the judge’s decision “is the first step toward holding UNC-CH accountable for their actions.” They urged Orange-Chatham District Attorney Jeff Nieman to dismiss the remaining cases.
“This trial made it clear that what these protesters did was protected by the First Amendment,” Miller said. “It is shameful that the DA has not dismissed these cases, and any continued effort to prosecute these individuals would just further highlight that the DA’s office is not interested in pursuing justice, but instead, assisting UNC-CH in punishing these protesters for daring to speak up about a genocide.”
Soeder called the decision “good news for the Palestinian solidarity movement and for political dissent as a means of social change in general.”
District attorney weighs options
Nieman dismissed trespassing charges against five other defendants before they went to trial when his office could not identify the police officers who witnessed their actions.
“I’ve handled a lot of protest cases and just a lot of cases, and it’s very rare that you have this many people charged at once in a somewhat chaotic environment,” Nieman told The News & Observer on Monday.
There were also “a lot of officers involved from various outside agencies,” he said.
“Ideally, when someone gets charged with a crime, the police collect the evidence and they provide us with a report of who did what. That just didn’t happen in a normal fashion this time,” he said.
He will review the judge’s written order in the case heard on Friday to determine whether to appeal and if that decision will affect the remaining cases, Nieman said. It will also help his office advise law enforcement on how to handle future arrests.
Several protests have been held this year on the Chapel Hill campus and at Peace and Justice Plaza outside the courthouse on Franklin Street to show solidarity with Palestinians under Israeli fire in the Gaza Strip. On May 8, three protesters were charged when a crowd attempted to block the vehicle of a UNC provost leaving campus.
The protesters have demanded that UNC acknowledge “the genocide in Palestine,” disclose and divest from investments in companies that support Israel, and end study-abroad programs in Israel. At least 13 protesters were UNC students or former students at the time they were charged.
Six defendants have so far accepted a conditional discharge of their cases, and 19 received deferred prosecutions. All will have their charges dismissed if they complete community service hours. Eight more protesters have hearings scheduled this week and in January.
This story was originally published December 16, 2024 at 12:30 PM.
