Case Dropped Against 3 Disabled Protesters

Trespassing and disturbing-the-peace charges were dropped Wednesday against three paraplegics arrested last summer for staging repeated demonstrations at the governor’s office in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles Deputy City Atty. Brooke White requested that the case be dismissed following an earlier court ruling that he said would have “doubled the length of a trial” and produced evidence “likely to raise sympathy in a jury.”

Municipal Court Judge Ernest L. Aubry had ruled that the three wheelchair-bound activists could argue that the protests were the only way to get the state to replace quadriplegic Rick Tauscher’s 17-year-old, broken wheelchair.

The prosecutor said Aubry’s ruling “changed the complexion of the case from trespass to one involving Tauscher’s health conditions,” which “would have vastly increased the time and expense to prosecute” the misdemeanor charges.

One of the disabled defendants, Nancy Becker Kennedy, said she was not entirely happy with the city attorney’s decision to drop the misdemeanor charges.

“This case was about whether or not the government could be allowed to neglect someone to death,” said the 39-year-old activist. “I wanted an acquittal to show that it is not all right.”

Kennedy and co-defendants Lillibeth Navarro, 35, and Randy Horton, 30, were among several disabled people who protested at Gov. George Deukmejian’s Los Angeles office in June and July. A decision was made to make them stand trial, White said, because they were the only ones repeatedly arrested.

All three pleaded not guilty, saying that their civil disobedience was justified because alleged government neglect was endangering a friend’s life.

In their protests, the trio charged that Medi-Cal’s refusal to buy a new $14,000 motorized wheelchair for Tauscher was causing irreversible damage to his health. Tauscher, 43, who was injured in a boating accident on Lake Havasu four days after his 26th birthday, has been bedridden for three years.

Anthony J. Serra, who represented one of the disabled defendants, said the judge’s ruling virtually destroyed the prosecution’s chance of winning.

“The defendant’s would have testified that . . . they went to the governor’s office as a last resort to get him to buy Tauscher a wheelchair,” Serra said. “And we would have brought Tauscher into court on a gurney to testify--as well as his medical doctor--who would say his patient has developed bedsores and pneumonia.”

Prosecutor White countered, however, that there was no reason to believe that Tauscher, who is still awaiting a replacement wheelchair, was in a “life-threatening” situation.

Don Frank Taub Persina, a spokesman for the Southern California chapter of the American Disabled for Access Power Today, said, “If they had put our members in jail it would have forced people to come to terms with the fact that there is no Medi-Cal care for the poor in this society.

“Now, we’re back to square one,” Persina continued, “and we’ll have to do more disobedience even though we are getting ripped to shreds physically, financially and emotionally.”

Tauscher, the man at the center of the case, said he believes that disabled people must sometimes be willing to break the law to improve their lives.

“When you are all by yourself it’s like you against the world,” Tauscher said. “If you don’t raise some hell and get arrested, people don’t want to see other people in wheelchairs. It’s like we are invisible.”