Last Friday, Jan. 23, all charges were dismissed against three protesters who were arrested and cited during two separate demonstrations in Shenandoah County last year. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
Joan Griffin of Basye, Shelley Gingerich of Woodstock, and Mike Dart of Rileyville emerged vindicated from the General District Court on Friday afternoon. As WMRA previously reported, all three participated in protests against the Trump administration in Shenandoah County last year, and ran afoul of the Virginia State Police. About 40 people attended Friday's proceedings.
Judge Amy B. Tisinger did not wade into whether the protesters had a constitutional right to be on the overpass bridges in Woodstock and Quicksburg under the First Amendment, or whether state police had violated Dart and Gingerich's due process rights during their arrests. Rather, she dismissed the charges based on the language of the law – and the prosecutors' lack of evidence that the protesters actually broke it.
Leaving the courthouse, Dart commented –
MIKE DART: I'll save the constitutional issues for another day!
Griffin's case was up first on Friday afternoon. She's one of a group of protesters who have assembled at the I-81 overpass bridge near exit 283 in Woodstock every week since March of last year. On August 22nd, the Virginia Department of Transportation installed signs prohibiting "non-travel" use of the bridge. The next day, Griffin continued to demonstrate on the bridge after a state trooper told her to stop – and he issued her a citation for loitering.
Attorney Grant Penrod, who represented both Griffin and Gingerich, argued that loitering is, by definition, "for no inherent reason," and a statute that prohibits loitering does not reasonably prohibit protesting.
In dismissing the case, Judge Tisinger noted the law says that pedestrians shall not loiter on a posted bridge "where loitering has been determined by the Commissioner of Highways or the local governing body … to present a public safety hazard." Tisinger said the prosecution had not shown any evidence that an appropriate official had made such a public safety hazard determination.
Next on the docket were Dart and Gingerich's cases. About a week after Griffin's citation, these two were part of a small demonstration on the overpass bridge near exit 269 in Quicksburg. Troopers testified in court that their sergeant called them to the bridge, where Dart and Gingerich refused to leave and were arrested. The defendants were prepared to testify and call witnesses on Friday about the sergeant's behavior and alleged procedural issues with their arrests, but the judge dismissed the charges before the defense had a chance to put on evidence.
Tisinger took issue with Dart and Gingerich's trespassing charge, saying she wasn't convinced a state trooper "has the authority to command you to stay off" the bridge under this law. She then dismissed their obstruction charges as they stemmed from the trespassing charges. However, Tisinger added that there was "no question" in her mind that the troopers were primarily concerned with safety, and she admonished the demonstrators to "use some common sense" when expressing their constitutional rights.
Commonwealth's Attorney Elizabeth Cooper told WMRA that First Amendment-related cases were new territory for her office, and "we all learned something today."
"I firmly stand by our law enforcement," Cooper said, adding that she remains concerned about the safety of bridge protests.
When reached by phone on Tuesday, Gingerich refuted one trooper's account that she had kicked her feet and unbuckled her seatbelt during the arrest.
SHELLEY GINGERICH: Obviously, I'm happy how it ended up, that the charges were dismissed. I was actually hoping to be able to testify myself, but we didn't get to do that. I think only a part of the story was told in court.
Many parts of Gingerich and Dart's account of that day were corroborated by a state police report provided to Dart – that a Mount Jackson police officer had told the demonstrators they could remain on the bridge, that a magistrate initially denied the charges troopers wanted to place on Dart and Gingerich, that troopers then consulted with their sergeant and the commonwealth's attorney about charging them with obstruction, and that Dart never saw a magistrate. Dart holds the state police sergeant responsible for how this all played out.
At the end of the day, though –
DART: She's a fair judge, and she made some decent rulings, and I'm glad of the outcome.
Gingerich expressed her thanks to her lawyer, Penrod, and supporters in the community.
GINGERICH: Our country is in such bad shape right now that we, all of us need to … we need to speak up. … What's going on in our country is just outrageous, and it's going to take everybody's awareness, I think, to make sure that things don't stay permanently like this. There are just too many things that are going on that we can't let go. So I'm going to keep on.
Judge Tisinger said in the courtroom that loitering and First Amendment issues could come up in another case someday, but "we'll have to cross that bridge, no pun intended, when we come to it."
