|
Comment on this article |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Miscellaneous |
|
Chicago IMC reporter released from jail, but R2K legal fiasco continues |
Current rating: 0 |
by Chris Geovanis/CIMC repost via ML
Email: hammerhard (nospam) aol.com (unverified!) |
22 Jun 2002
|
|
Chicago Indymedia reporter Chris Kaihatsu was finally released from a Madison jail this Thursday, after his arrest last Sunday while covering Sunday protests at the U.S. Mayors' Conference. But the legal limbo that kept him in the clink - a warrant for bogus charges stemming from the R2K protests, where he was also arrested while reporting for the IMC - continues. |
 Chicago Indymedia reporter Chris Kaihatsu was finally released from a Madison jail this Thursday, after his arrest last Sunday while covering Sunday protests at the U.S. Mayors' Conference. But the legal limbo that kept him in the clink - a warrant for bogus charges stemming from the R2K protests, where he was also arrested while reporting for the IMC - continues. |
Chicago Indymedia reporter Chris Kaihatsu was finally released from the custody of the Dane County Sheriff's office in Madison, Wisconsin on Thursday, four days after he was arrested while covering a Sunday protest in Madison at the U.S. Mayors' Conference on behalf of the Madison and Chicago Independent Media Centers. Kaihatsu is also a reporter for Labor Beat, a Chicago-based labor news agency.
Kaihatsu was held in custody an extra three days while Madison law enforcement sought to determine if the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office wished to follow up on extraditing Kaihatsu for an outstanding bench warrant on felony charges stemming from the R2K protests at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in August 2000.
Therein lies the rub, and the makings of a Kafkaesque legal fiasco. While the Philadelphia DA notified Madison law enforcement officials on Thursday that they had declined to extradite Kaihatsu on the outstanding bench warrant, the reporter was stunned and disappointed to find out that an array of bogus - and serious -- felony charges stemming from R2K continue to haunt him.
Kaihatsu's Philadelphia-based attorney Scott Griffith has characterized the lingering charges against Kaihatsu as "nonsense." Kaihatsu was among more than 400 people arrested during the R2K protests in what civil liberties advocates have characterized as a naked effort by the Philadelphia police to suppress lawful dissent and core constitutional rights. Protesters have filed an array of civil suits against law enforcement and government agencies in the wake of R2K, for charges ranging from wrongful arrest to illegal confiscation of lawful materials in a series of raids and arrests on puppet-making and organizing sites during the Republican Convention.
Kaihatsu, who was credentialed with the Chicago IMC when he was arrested in Philly, lost video footage and a video camera to law enforcement in the wake of his Philly arrest. In addition, he received notice by mail in Chicago on the day he was scheduled to appear in court in Philly to answer R2K charges.
"I immediately contacted the R2K legal collective," says Kaihatsu. "They advised me later that the felonies the Philly DA was alleging I had committed had subsequently been reduced to charges that do not even have the status of misdemeanors, and when the legal collective researched to see when my court call would occur, I was told my name did not even appear on the court docket in Philadelphia."
But according to the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, Kaihatsu was scheduled to appear in court in January 2001 to face felony charges for aggravated assault, conspiracy to commit aggravated assault, scattering rubbish, simple assault, reckless endangerment, obstruction, resisting arrest, creating a public nuisance and disorderly conduct. Curiously, Philadelphia court computer records also list another warrant on virtually identical charges the cops allege were committed by Kaihatsu on the same day as the charges cited in the outstanding warrant - but the court's computer system shows that those charges were dismissed.
"Mr. Kaihatsu is listed in the Philadelphia court computer system as a fugitive, a defendant at large," said Kathy Abookire of the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office. "According to the computer system, he didn't show up for a court hearing on January 8 of 2001, and at that time a bench warrant was issued. It is puzzling, and this is conjecture, but it looks like he was charged with the same sorts of crimes in two very similar incidents that occurred on the same day, but the record numbers are not identical - so they can't be the same incidents. One case was clearly disposed of on August 10, 2000, and prosecution was withdrawn without prejudice, which means that the District Attorney's Office could reactivate the charges in the future if they chose to do so."
Kaihatsu has another take on the situation. "I never received notice that I was to appear in court on January 8 of 2001, and I am completely innocent of all of these ridiculous charges," he says flatly. "I was arrested while I was lawfully covering police attacks on peaceful protesters on August 1, 2000 during the Republican National Convention."
"Philly prosecutors declined to extradite Kaihatsu for the R2K charges because they are currently extraditing people on outstanding bench warrants only if they are rearrested in Pennsylvania or adjoining states," says Dane County Sheriff's Office extradition officer Cathy Kisow. "Since Wisconsin is not adjacent to Pennsylvania, they notified the Dane County Sheriff by fax three days after Kaihatsu's arrest in Madison that they would not seek extradition - although the bench warrant remains active and cites a $3,000 bond requirement."
That's a surprisingly low bond call on such serious outstanding charges, a fact that neither Dane County or Philly DA staff could explain.
Philadelphia public defender Sean Nolan, who also defended many of the R2K arrestees, has another take on the legal limbo. "The Philly police and Philly DA have forced virtually every arrestee to go to court on charges stemming from R2K, no matter how trifling the charges or how great the likelihood those charges would be dismissed or the defendants would win in court," he says.
The vast majority of charges against R2K defendants have been thrown out by the courts, or defendants have won their cases, and civil liberties activists have charged that the Philly DA's aggressive prosecution of wrongfully arrested protesters effectively constitutes further harassment of people who sought to lawfully express dissent during R2K.
"I feel that it's extremely inappropriate for these arrests to be targeting activists who are expressing their first amendment right to assemble and petition to express themselves - or for these arrests to target clearly credentialed and identified members of the alternative media like myself who sought to cover these protests," says Kaihatsu of his arrest in Philly. "If you have scores of armed officers who are trained to use violence, it seems clear that they're more likely to be on a hair trigger and use force, and we certainly saw that in Philly in the raid on the puppet warehouse and in police attacks on protesters who were simply trying to express dissent at R2K."
He's also disturbed by the Madison police department's willingness to follow in the tradition of the Philly cops. "I was covering the first arrest of a protester at the US Mayor's Conference last Sunday, and I was clearly credentialed and clearly writing in my reporter's notebook, along with perhaps a dozen other reporters and corporate press camera crews very near me," he says. "That arrest was important news, and I was prevented from covering it for the alternative news projects that credentialed me to do so, and that is unconscionable. I didn't see Madison or Wisconsin State police snatching corporate press camera crews or reporters or snatching press credentials from the corporate press the way they did to me. And after the arrest of that first person last Sunday, law enforcement immediately called in a squadron of state riot police, who wore no badges, no name tags, no badge numbers, and who rather displayed an overwhelming and intimidating show of force that targeted protesters who were there simply there to voice their criticisms of the way taxpayer dollars are being used."
The Dane County prosecutor's office sent a student intern to represent them at Kaihatsu's bond hearing on Monday, and offered to let him go for time served - pending, of course, a response from the Philly DA's office on his outstanding warrant. Kaihatsu chose instead to plead not guilty to charges of disorderly conduct in the Madison incident. He is scheduled to appear in Dane County court on August 8.
Alternative media outlets have often been criticized for their bias or lack of thorough reporting, although in Kaihatsu's case, it would seem those charges could be more credibly leveled against local corporate press outlets. Kaihatsu was wrongly identified by reporters for both the Wisconsin State Journal and the Madison Capital Times as a 'protester' rather than a reporter after his arrest last Sunday. Curiously, neither corporate newspaper made an effort to contact Kaihatsu, his legal counsel or his credentialing news agencies, although both IMC representatives and his local attorney, David Karpe, were in court when he was arraigned in Madison on Monday, where the Capital Times reporter appears to have gathered much of his 'evidence'. The Capital Times did subsequently print a correction which appeared in the print version of their newspaper - but not on their website - buried among a page of ads.
Video still courtesy of Madison Indymedia. For more coverage of Kaihatsu's arrest and the tireless efforts of Madison IMC colleagues to win his release and correct the corporate press record, see madison.indymedia.org |
See also:
http://chicago.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=11469&group=webcast
|
