1st judge to rule on protesters dismisses 35
500 charged during protests following death of George Floyd in Minnesota
The first batch of cases against protesters in Cincinnati was dismissed by a judge Thursday, according to court documents. Nearly 500 people were charged with misconduct in an emergency during large-scale protests following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minnesota.
In response to property damage and looting in Downtown and Over-theRhine, Mayor John Cranley issued a curfew which led to the mass arrests.
The cases have been spread across many of Hamilton County's 13 municipal court judges. The Cincinnati Mass Defense Coalition has filed motions to dismiss the charges to every judge, but Judge Janaya Trotter Bratton is the first to issue a ruling on the 35 cases she was assigned.
Trotter Bratton called the curfew unconstitutionally vague in her order to dismiss.
She said it failed to define who is an essential worker (who were exempt from the order) and what is a public space. Under the curfew order, Trotter Bratton said “a person risks arrest if the person takes their trash to the curb.”
“The curfew is overboard in its application, and is not only unconstitutional as applied to (the protesters), but as to any person appearing outside in the City of Cincinnati,” she said.
The Cincinnati Mass Defense Coalition said it will continue to fight for the remaining defendants “These dismissals mark a victory in the fight against arrests and prosecutions targeting and attempting to silence the movement for Black liberation,” the coalition said in a press release.
Jennifer Kinsley is one of the lawyers representing the protesters. She said she believes Trotter's dismissals set the stage for other judges to dismiss the cases. “The city should never have arrested people engaged in peaceful protesting, an activity the State of Ohio has deemed ‘essential' during the pandemic,” Kinsley said. “For far too long, our country has misused the criminal justice system to silence and punish those who speak out against racism and inequality.”