‘Chilling' effect on protesters as Cop City prosecution drags into second year
Nearly two years into the largest Rico, or conspiracy, prosecution against a protest movement in US history, the case is mired in delays and defence claims that proceedings are politically motivated and ruining the lives of the 61 activists and protesters who face trial.
Rico cases are usually brought against organized crime, and are associated with the mafia, but in Georgia a sprawling prosecution has been brought against dozens of people opposed to a police training center near Atlanta known as Cop City.
The controversial training center – which officially opened its doors last months in an invitation-only ceremony – attracted global headlines after police shot dead Manuel Paez Terán, or 'Tortuguita', an environmental activist protesting against the project, in January 2023.
Opposition to the training center, built on a 171-acre footprint in a forest south-east of Atlanta, has included local and national organizations and protesters, centered on concerns such as unchecked police militarization and clearing forests in an era of climate crisis.
Atlanta police officials say the center is needed for 'world-class' training, and to attract new officers.
Last week, defense attorneys in the halls of Fulton county superior court were still unclear on or unhappy with the results of the most recent hearing in the case.
'So when is it that the trial would begin?' one veteran defense attorney asked another – after the day's proceedings were supposed to have answered at least that question.
Another highlighted how the state had introduced more alleged evidence against the 61 defendants tied to a movement to stop Cop City the same morning – despite the court already having given prosecutors two deadlines for discovery material, the last one a year ago.
The state's indictment alleges that actions ranging from throwing molotov cocktails to paying for camping supplies for protestors who occupied woods near the proposed site of the training center were 'in furtherance of the conspiracy'.
There were already more than five terabytes of evidence that one defense attorney described as 'unorganized, not date-stamped, with some files corrupted' during the hearing.
Chaos has accompanied the case since Georgia attorney general Chris Carr's August 2023 indictment of 61 people used Rico to prosecute the case, several defense attorneys said.
As the case drags on, 'it's not just your case and your freedom, but what you do in your everyday life that is on hold,' said attorney Xavier T de Janon.
De Janon mentioned his client, Jamie Marsicano, as an example: they have graduated law school and passed the North Carolina bar – but won't be admitted until the charges are resolved.
Also, the case's high profile means 'a precedence could be set, a potential chilling effect: when people are protesting against the government, they see other people prosecuted for Rico,' said defense attorney Brad Thomson, with the People's Law Office.
This is particularly important right now, Thomson added: 'We're seeing with the Trump administration that people are even being deported for protesting.'
Judge Kevin Farmer, newly assigned to the case after the previous judge left for another court, reminded a full courtroom at least four times that Georgia's attempt to charge the protesters with criminal conspiracy was already nearly two years old.
Defense attorneys reminded the court that numerous irregularities had already occurred.
'Y'all brought this case, at the time you brought it – that was your choice,' Farmer told Georgia's deputy attorney general, John Fowler, at one point, referring to several missed deadlines set by the court.
At Wednesday's proceedings, Atlanta's police presence included officers standing across the street taking photos of protesters urging the state to drop the charges, posting up on the corner and parking along the street in front of the courthouse.
An overflow courtroom had to be arranged for supporters and media trying to follow along.
Farmer, in his first hearing as the new judge on the case, acknowledged its scale. 'I have a 61-person elephant. Normally you try to eat the elephant one bite at a time. I'm gonna try to eat the elephant four or five bites at a time,' he said.
The plan: hold trials of small groups of defendants, each one lasting around a month, and then fewer over time, according to Fowler.
Farmer said trials could begin as early as June – but then the day's proceedings included the state's intention to release more evidence, recovered from undercover agents, according to Fowler. De Janon said evidence already included 37 days of bodycam and surveillance video and 29 days of audio files.
Farmer also said he wanted defense attorneys to file individual motions on behalf of their clients by 30 May, rather than sign on to each other's, as many have done until now. This means the number of motions – on issues such as alleged first amendment violations or misuse of Georgia's Rico statute – could balloon from more than 250 to three or four times that amount, De Janon said.
Another wrinkle in the proceeding: the case's former judge, Kimberly M Esmond Adams, issued an order at 10.50pm the night before, denying motions to dismiss filed from one group of defendants – including members of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund (ASF), or ASF, a bail fund whose members are mentioned more than 100 times in the original indictment's 109 pages.
Their attorney, Don Samuel, told the court he did not understand why Adams would respond to motions received in September on the night before the hearing, and that the order did not address issues raised in his motions. The ASF defendants may be in the first group to face trial as early as next month, according to the court.
An attorney with more than a decade's experience in Atlanta who observed the proceeding said he had 'never seen a judge who was no longer on a case blindside an attorney or group of attorneys with an order sent at the last minute the night before a hearing'.
Outside the courthouse afterward, ASF member and defendant Marlon Kautz pointed to the case's continuing impact: 'As long as 61 people are facing decades in prison … simply for being associated with a political movement, protest everywhere is chilled and intimidated.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sky News
14 minutes ago
- Sky News
Met Police chief 'frustrated' at planned protest to support Palestine Action - as government moves to ban the group
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley says he is "shocked and frustrated" at a planned protest in support of Palestine Action. The demonstration, due to take place in Westminster later, comes as the government moves to ban the group under anti-terror laws. Activists from Palestine Action hit the headlines last week after targeting RAF Brize Norton and damaging two military aircraft in a significant security breach. 1:33 Home Secretary Yvette Cooper will update MPs on the move to proscribe the organisation, which would make it a criminal offence to belong to or support it. Sir Mark said that - until this happens - the force has "no power in law" to prevent the protest from taking place, but lawbreakers will be "dealt with robustly". He added: "This is an organised extremist criminal group, whose proscription as terrorists is being actively considered. "Members are alleged to have caused millions of pounds of criminal damage, assaulted a police officer with a sledgehammer and last week claimed responsibility for breaking into an airbase and damaging aircraft. "Multiple members of the group are awaiting trial accused of serious offences." He added that - while the right to protest is essential - "actions in support of such a group go beyond what most would see as a legitimate protest". Over the weekend, Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said he could not rule out the possibility of a foreign power being behind Palestine Action. Any move to proscribe the group must be debated and approved by MPs and peers. Speaking to Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips on Sky News, former justice secretary Lord Charlie Falconer suggested that vandalising aircraft would not solely provide legal justification for such a move. 2:45 Lord Falconer said: "I am not aware of what Palestine Action has done beyond the painting of things on the planes in Brize Norton, they may have done other things I didn't know. "But generally, that sort of demonstration wouldn't justify proscription so there must be something else that I don't know about." Palestine Action has staged a series of protests in recent months - spraying the offices of Allianz Insurance in London, and vandalising Donald Trump's golf course in Ayrshire.
Sky News
20 minutes ago
- Sky News
Regime change: Is Trump about to 'Make Iran Great Again'?
👉 Follow Trump100 on your podcast app 👈 The US bombs Iran. Three nuclear sites heavily hit. Cue condemnation from Iran - and promises of retribution. As the Iranian foreign minister heads to Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin and discuss what to do next, we ask: what has happened, why did the Trump administration decide to take action, what's the response domestically and internationally - and what on earth could happen next. If you've got a question you'd like the Trump100 team to answer, you can email it to trump100@ Don't forget, you can also watch all episodes on our YouTube channel.
The Independent
22 minutes ago
- The Independent
ICE detains Marine Corps veteran's wife who was still breastfeeding their child
Marine Corps veteran Adrian Clouatre doesn't know how to tell his children where their mother went after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained her last month. When his nearly 2-year-old son Noah asks for his mother before bed, Clouatre just tells him, ' Mama will be back soon.' When his 3-month-old, breastfeeding daughter Lyn is hungry, he gives her a bottle of baby formula instead. He's worried how his newborn will bond with her mother absent skin-to-skin contact. His wife, Paola, is one of tens of thousands of people in custody and facing deportation as the Trump administration pushes for immigration officers to arrest 3,000 people a day. Even as Marine Corps recruiters promote enlistment as protection for families lacking legal status, directives for strict immigrant enforcement have cast away practices of deference previously afforded to military families, immigration law experts say. The federal agency tasked with helping military family members gain legal status now refers them for deportation, government memos show. To visit his wife, Adrian Clouatre has to make an eight-hour round trip from their home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to a rural ICE detention center in Monroe. Clouatre, who qualifies as a service-disabled veteran, goes every chance he can get. Paola Clouatre, a 25-year-old Mexican national whose mother brought her into the country illegally more than a decade ago, met Adrian Clouatre, 26, at a southern California nightclub during the final months of his five years of military service in 2022. Within a year, they had tattooed each other's names on their arms. After they married in 2024, Paola Clouatre sought a green card to legally live and work in the U.S. Adrian Clouatre said he is 'not a very political person' but believes his wife deserved to live legally in the U.S. 'I'm all for 'get the criminals out of the country,' right?" he said. "But the people that are here working hard, especially the ones married to Americans — I mean, that's always been a way to secure a green card.' Detained at a green card meeting The process to apply for Paola Clouatre's green card went smoothly at first, but eventually she learned ICE had issued an order for her deportation in 2018 after her mother failed to appear at an immigration hearing. Clouatre and her mother had been estranged for years — Clouatre cycled out of homeless shelters as a teenager — and up until a couple of months ago, Clouatre had 'no idea' about her mother's missed hearing or the deportation order, her husband said. Adrian Clouatre recalled that a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services staffer asked about the deportation order during a May 27 appointment as part of her green card application. After Paola Clouatre explained that she was trying to reopen her case, the staffer asked her and her husband to wait in the lobby for paperwork regarding a follow-up appointment, which her husband said he believed was a 'ploy.' Soon, officers arrived and handcuffed Paola Clouatre, who handed her wedding ring to her husband for safekeeping. Adrian Clouatre, eyes welling with tears, said he and his wife had tried to 'do the right thing' and that he felt ICE officers should have more discretion over arrests, though he understood they were trying to do their jobs. 'It's just a hell of a way to treat a veteran,' said Carey Holliday, a former immigration judge who is now representing the couple. 'You take their wives and send them back to Mexico?' The Clouatres filed a motion for a California-based immigration judge to reopen the case on Paola's deportation order and are waiting to hear back, Holliday said. Less discretion for military families Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement that Paola Clouatre 'is in the country illegally" and that the administration is 'not going to ignore the rule of law.' 'Ignoring an Immigration Judge's order to leave the U.S. is a bad idea,' U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a June 9 post on X which appeared to refer to Clouatre's case. The agency added that the government 'has a long memory and no tolerance for defiance when it comes to making America safe again.' Prior to the Trump administration's push to drive up deportations, USCIS provided much more discretion for veterans seeking legal status for a family member, said Holliday and Margaret Stock, a military immigration law expert. In a Feb. 28 memo, the agency said it 'will no longer exempt' from deportation people in groups that had received more grace in the past. This includes the families of military personnel or veterans, Stock said. As of June 12, the agency said it has referred upward of 26,000 cases to ICE for deportation. USCIS still offers a program allowing family members of military personnel who illegally entered the U.S. to remain in the country as they apply for a green card. But there no longer appears to be room for leeway, such as giving a veteran's spouse like Paola Clouatre the opportunity to halt her active deportation order without facing arrest, Stock said. But numerous Marine Corps recruiters have continued to post ads on social media, geared toward Latinos, promoting enlistment as a way to gain 'protection from deportation' for family members. 'I think it's bad for them to be advertising that people are going to get immigration benefits when it appears that the administration is no longer offering these immigration benefits,' Stock said. 'It sends the wrong message to the recruits.' Marine Corps spokesperson Master Sgt. Tyler Hlavac told The Associated Press that recruiters have now been informed they are 'not the proper authority' to 'imply that the Marine Corps can secure immigration relief for applicants or their families.' ___ Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
