Anarchists Giving Up Legal Fight

Last week’s terrorism attacks on the East Coast have complicated--and, in some cases, derailed--the trials of dozens of anarchists arrested in a violent May Day confrontation with Long Beach police.

The anarchists previously had been upbeat about their imminent trials, which they had hoped to turn into public forums for their radical political sentiments.

Now, defense attorneys wonder if their 37 fiercely anti-capitalist clients can get a fair trial in Long Beach or anywhere else on such counts as riot, attempted riot, unlawful assembly, and conspiracy to commit a crime.

Over the past week, six defendants who had promised to challenge police tactics instead have pleaded no contest or guilty to misdemeanor charges. More pleas are expected, according to deputy city prosecutor David Gordon.

“When Sept. 11 occurred, they realized that no one would pay much attention to claims of police misconduct while hundreds of officers lay buried in rubble in New York,” he said. “I think that by early November there will be but a handful of hard cores left wanting to go to trial.”

Until last week, the demonstrators had predicted exoneration, claiming they were victims of police brutality. Beyond that, they stressed that identification would be difficult because all of them had been wearing masks and black clothes in downtown Long Beach during the May 1 rally decrying corporate greed. In addition, they pointed to a federal judge’s recent ruling that questioned the validity of a city law requiring 30 days’ notice for a public demonstration.

Now such optimism has vanished, according to one prospective expert witness for the defense, Larry George, a professor of political science at Cal State Long Beach.

“The tragic events,” George said, “may well have changed the background climate to the point where the defendants would be identified as enemies of the state and perpetrators of violence.”

About 95 people, mainly teenagers and young adults from Southern California, were arrested during the protest that erupted into a running street brawl with police in riot gear. At least a dozen demonstrators were injured, and many more reportedly suffered scrapes and bruises. Police said their officers escaped serious injuries, but some were bruised and cut by thrown rocks and grappling with demonstrators.

To avoid sapping the city’s legal resources if all the defendants were tried simultaneously in one courtroom, authorities divided them into small groups to be tried separately and appointed publicly financed defense attorneys.

Long before the East Coast terrorism, 23 of those arrested in the demonstration were sentenced to probation and time served under plea bargains offered to them by city prosecutors. In addition, more than two dozen juveniles were released and most had the charges dropped.

Two other adults are awaiting trial on felony assault charges. As of Friday, 31 more were each facing six misdemeanor charges.

The first two defendants to go to trial were Louise Emily Van Der Laan, 19, and Yutaka Bazil Yokoyama, 31, both of whom pleaded no contest on Sept. 12 to six misdemeanor counts just after a jury was impaneled.

Superior Court Judge Brad Andrews sentenced them to three years’ probation and 30 days of community service.

Their pleadings came less than an hour after Andrews dismissed a motion by defense attorney Lynda Vitale to delay the case for at least a month.

“The events of Sept. 11,” Vitale said in an interview, “would have made it impossible for jurors to remain unbiased and fairly weigh the evidence without thoughts of what happened.”

Next in line for trial is Christopher J. Harrington, who is represented by Torrance lawyer Alex Griggs.

“These people were exercising their rights to free speech,” Griggs said. “It would be a shame if the current climate is such that they are curtailed from doing that.”

Nonetheless, Griggs said his client, whose trial is scheduled to start Oct. 10, is considering the implications of avoiding trial by entering a plea.

On Thursday, four other defendants pleaded no contest to at least one misdemeanor charge. Among them was Adam Steudle, 20, whose Culver City attorney Noah Allen conceded, “There’s a huge fear that the events of Sept. 11 had a domino effect on jurors.”

The defendants insist that their goal was a peaceful downtown demonstration and march on International Workers Day behind a large banner that read: “Capitalism Stole My Life.”

The trouble started after some demonstrators, chanting and cursing against “the police state,” threw rocks at officers, according to police.

“The rocks got it going,” recalled Long Beach Police Sgt. Erik Herzog.

Downtown streets were shut down for four hours as police fired on some demonstrators with rubber bullets and beanbags while chasing them in and around an area known for its high-end bistros, financial institutions and hotels.

Law enforcement authorities said it cost the city $100,000 in overtime pay and the use of equipment, including a helicopter, to handle the disruption.

At the scene, police collected evidence including rocks, hammers, a slingshot, bags of ball bearings, pointed sticks, gas masks, plastic bags filled with human feces, bombs used by fishermen to scare off seals, and fireworks, including one item that resembled a hand grenade.

Police said they also determined that some of the demonstrators had arrived wearing crude shields under their baggy black sweaters and sweat shirts: thick layers of newspaper wrapped in duct tape and strapped around their arms and over their chests.

Critical to the prosecution have been 500 photographs and 14 hours of videotaped footage of the demonstration taken by police and witnesses in the vicinity of the bustling corner of 1st Street and Pine Avenue.

Deputy city prosecutor Andrea Davalos said, “We went over details in the photos and video footage, frame by frame, over and over, 12 hours a day, Saturdays and Sundays.

“We noted people’s backpacks, shirts, logos, shoes, even the tears in their jeans,” she said. “Eventually, we were able to make positive identification of each and every one of them. We know what each of them did and when they did it.”

Prosecutors matched that information with photographs of suspects when they were in custody and unmasked.

City prosecutor Tom Reeves plans to play an edited version of the videotape in court, including slow-motion scenes of rocks being hurled at police.

“They conspired to come to this city armed and disguised for the purpose of creating a riot, chaos and disorder,” Gordon said. “But now there are too many ghosts floating around in the courtroom for anyone with half a brain to expose themselves to a jury or a judge.”

In the meantime, local support for the anarchists has been mixed.

Mark Bowen, a Los Angeles Unified School District high school teacher and president of the Long Beach chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, remains skeptical of local police.

It was not a crime, he said, if demonstrators cursed at police and carried signs denouncing the influence of multinational corporations. “The police were beating the anarchists with clubs, and I would not rule out the possibility that they planted evidence,” Bowen said.

Sharon Cotrell of the Long Beach Legal Monitoring Committee said the defendants have been “forced by circumstances to plead, which is very sad,” she said. “These young people did no wrong. The police were outrageous.”

Some other observers are not so sure.

Until Sept. 11, members of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Long Beach had been considering a proposal to back the defendants.

But Pat Marr, who is a member of the church’s Social Concerns Committee, said such a move seems unlikely now.

“It sounds like it was a very difficult situation for police,” she said. “And with the World Trade Center situation going on, it is not a good time to be in the sort of trial the arrestees are fighting.”

Added Marr: “Personally, their cases are on a far back burner.”