Attorneys offer help to July 4 protesters

A total of 55 attorneys – including a former judge, a former county prosecutor and Gonzaga law professors – have volunteered to help defend protesters arrested in Riverfront Park in a July 4 confrontation with police.

Interest in joining the case has grown to the point that there are more than three times as many defense lawyers as defendants, who have been dubbed the Spokane 17.

“There are some pretty heavy hitters,” said John Clark, a Spokane Valley attorney who is serving as primary defense counsel for several of the defendants.

The interest has been sparked by constitutional questions of free speech and freedom of assembly, not by ongoing questions of police misconduct in events before or after the protest, Clark said.

“The constitutional issue is where do you draw the line between acceptable protest and acceptable police intervention,” he said.

“We think the police got it wrong, but I don’t believe there was any animus.”

Clark’s firm on Tuesday filed a motion to dismiss the charges against his clients because, a 20-page motion argues, they weren’t breaking any laws.

Similar documents, known as a Knapstad motion, will be filed this week for all 17 protesters who face misdemeanor charges of trespassing in the park and failure to obey a lawful order from police to disperse on July 4. It argues that protesters had a right to be in the park, and therefore couldn’t be trespassing; and that the police had no right to order the protesters to leave, so their dispersal order was unlawful.

The outpouring of volunteer legal support was coordinated by Patrick Stiley, a longtime Spokane defense attorney who had his own brush with city officials and protests a generation ago.

Stiley and his partner, Frank Cikutovich, are defending the only protester facing a felony, Zach St. John, a local musician and restaurant worker, who is charged with assaulting a police officer.

The lineup of support for the protesters does not directly affect St. John’s case, which will likely go to trial in December, Cikutovich said Tuesday. Among the volunteer attorneys are former Judge John Nolette and former county Prosecuting Attorney James Sweetser.

“The reason (so many lawyers volunteered) is the bar association wanted to show how important First Amendment rights are to them,” Cikutovich said.

“But if the charges against the 17 are dropped, it goes to the credibility of the officer on the scene.”

St. John was the first person arrested in the late afternoon of July 4, after a group that was demonstrating against excessive police force had settled in an area of Riverfront Park’s Clocktower Meadow.

St. John was one of the group that was using a large American flag as a picnic blanket, which prompted complaints from other people in the park.

Officer Jay Kernkamp wrote in his report that St. John grabbed his arm to demand his badge number, shouted profanities at him, charged him and grabbed him by the throat with such force that the officer was beginning to lose consciousness. He and others put St. John on the ground and arrested him, he wrote.

St. John’s version of events was significantly different. He said he was knocked off his seat by someone who pushed him from behind, got up and asked the officer standing behind him for his name and badge number; the officer wouldn’t give it to him, and when he persisted he was taken to the ground and arrested.

Spokane Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick has defended the police response to the protest.

At a recent forum she told some of the protesters, and others who gathered to question her about police tactics and procedures, that free speech has limits and she believes from reading the reports that the protesters broke the law by trespassing and refusing the order to disperse.

Kirkpatrick said police had probable cause to make the arrests, but it would