Charges Against Activist Dropped : Law: Ed Lawson, who once won landmark court ruling, contends that latest incident stemmed from racism.

Ultimately, the law agreed with Ed Lawson.

On March 30, Lawson, 46, an African-American, was stopped by police in front of the Beverly Hills apartment of a business associate.

Police charged Lawson with three misdemeanors after, they said in their report, he failed to produce a driver’s license or other identification on request. Lawson insists he was never asked to show identification, only if he had it.

Lawson has said repeatedly that he believes racism was the reason he was stopped, a charge police deny.

Lawson, a civil rights activist and sometime actor who wears his blond-and-brown hair in dreadlocks, also says that the Beverly Hills police were ignorant of the 1983 Supreme Court ruling that individuals who do not appear to be involved in criminal activity have no obligation to carry or produce identification when stopped by police.

Lawson should know. He was the subject of that landmark case, pursued after his habit of taking long, nighttime walks in predominantly white neighborhoods in San Diego led to his repeated arrest on vagrancy charges.

On Thursday, all charges against Lawson were dropped in Beverly Hills Municipal Court. Lawson had been prepared to argue that his constitutional rights were violated and said he was surprised by the decision to drop the charges.

According to Lisa Hart, the deputy district attorney who made the announcement, the decision was made in the interest of justice.

“After careful scrutiny of the case law relative to the facts of the case, it is the office’s opinion that there was insufficient evidence to justify the stop of the defendant,” Hart said.

Lawson, who lives in Venice, was stopped after a Beverly Hills resident told police she saw a black man in a car with a license number similar to Lawson’s driving slowly in the vicinity of an elementary school. According to police, children had been sexually harassed at the school in the past.

The police found no evidence that Lawson had behaved inappropriately near the school. After he was arrested, he said he had slowed down in the area of the school only because he was required to do so by law.

Lawson was charged with a misdemeanor violation of the penal code--obstructing the lawful duties of a police officer--and two misdemeanor violations of the vehicle code--giving false information to a police officer and failing to produce a driver’s license on demand.

Hart said she did not think anyone could complain that police had responded to a citizen’s report involving a school. But when her office took a close look at the relevant case law, she said, it became clear that Lawson should not have been arrested. Making such a determination is the district attorney’s job, not the police’s, she said. “We get paid to keep our nose in the books, and they don’t.”

Lawson, who has filed a criminal complaint with the city of Beverly Hills charging that police falsified the arrest report, said he had expected a protracted court battle over the misdemeanor case. Asked if he was relieved about the dismissal of the charges, or disappointed, the media-savvy activist said he was neither.

“When you are in a civil rights battle, one of the things you can’t afford is an emotional commitment to any aspect of it,” he said. “It’s war.”