It's not over yet
Chattanooga 3 get suspended sentences
By Leslie
Feinberg
Three Black anti-police-brutality activists known as the
Chattanooga 3 received suspended sentences on Feb. 26.
Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, Damon McGee and Mikail Musa Muhammad
(Ralph P. Mitchell) had been convicted on Jan. 11 under the
state's "disruption law." The charges resulted from their
attempts to speak out about police abuse at a May 19, 1998,
meeting of the City Council in Chattanooga, Tenn.
Before the City Council meeting, the Coalition Against
Police Brutality--to which all three men belonged--held a march
on city hall. More than 150 people took part to protest police
killings of two Black men, Kevin McCullough and Montrail
Collins, just days before.
Coalition leaders had arranged with former City Council
President David Crockett for Ervin to present the demand for
community control of the Chattanooga police to the May 19
meeting.
More than 100 people packed the city council meeting to back
Ervin's proposal. But when the time came, Crockett would not
allow Ervin to speak.
Police arrested Ervin when he attempted to read his proposal
from the speaker's podium. McGee and Muhammad, at the podium
with Ervin, were also arrested.
Tennessee's "disruption law" criminalizes as a misdemeanor
offense any verbal utterance or physical action that disrupts a
lawful meeting.
'A partial victory'
Prior to sentencing, each of the Chattanooga 3 defendants
addressed the court.
"There should be no sentences," McGee said. "We are
civil-rights activists, not disrupters. We went to the city
council meeting to petition the government to investigate the
police killings of Kevin McCullough and Montrail Collins and to
stop the rampant police beatings and killings of Black and poor
people in this city."
McGee gave Criminal Court Judge Rebecca J. Stern a written
statement that included the names of 42 people who have been
killed by Chattanooga police since the early 1980s.
Muhammad told the judge: "I am not begging the court for
anything. I had a right to stand up against injustice. The
legal and moral thing for you to do is not give me any
sentence."
Ervin said there was no "criminal intent" to disrupt the
city council meeting. "We made arrangements to speak," he said.
He added that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution
"says that the people have a right to redress their grievances
to government officials."
Stern stopped short of doing the right thing. She did
sentence the three. But what was unexpected is that the
sentences were suspended.
In remarks to the defendants that were patronizing, but
surprising, she told the three: "I believe your motivations
were good. Your method was wrong, but your message was
right."
Stern gave Ervin a 60-day suspended sentence and 10 days of
community service. McGee and Muhammad each received 30-day
suspended sentences and five days community service. In
addition, the judge ruled that the three must pay court
costs.
Muhammad, also convicted of resisting arrest, will serve
concurrent sentences.
'Law is dangerous, undemocratic'
After the judge's decision, Ervin said he had expected the
maximum six-month prison sentence for disruption.
Ervin explained that the suspended sentencing followed a
Feb. 24 rally in support of the Chattanooga 3 held in front of
the office of the Hamilton County sheriff. Television stations
gave wide coverage to the rally.
News about the case has spread beyond Tennessee. Activists
from Kentucky, Georgia, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, North
Carolina and Michigan came to participate in the rally. One
person attending was from Brighton, England.
As a result of this support rally, Ervin noted, "It was a
completely different courtroom today than when we were tried
last month."
In a four-page written statement Ervin had given Stern and
the media, he characterized the Jan. 9-11 trial of the
Chattanooga 3 as "a kangaroo court trial, a political show
trial, to satisfy the desire of local officials for
revenge."
The Chattanooga 3 declared that they will appeal their
convictions. They are ready to take their case to the U.S.
Supreme Court if need be.
Ervin said: "The suspended sentences were only a partial
victory. The disruption law is dangerous and undemocratic. The
fight of the Chattanooga 3 will not be over until this law is
declared unconstitutional."
The disruption law has been applied only twice since the
state legislature amended it in 1989, according to Professor
Dwight Aarons of the University of Tennessee College of Law. In
both cases, Ervin was a defendant.
"The disruption law should be called the Ervin law," Ervin
said.
In 1993, Ervin was a defendant in the case of the
Chattanooga 8. Those eight activists were officially charged
with disrupting a police memorial. Ervin and one other
defendant were convicted in 1994.
The Tennessee Supreme Court recently ruled that it would not
consider Ervin's appeal of the 1994 disruption conviction.
Ervin said that he would take that appeal to either federal
district court or the U.S. Supreme Court.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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