July 27, 2009
PENNSYLVANIA — A photographer at Pennsylvania State University’s Daily Collegian was cleared of his remaining failure to disperse charge July 22 in a pre-trial motion after he was arrested last fall while covering a post-football-game riot.
By Kevin Cirilli
Collegian Staff Writer
A judge dismissed Wednesday the remaining charge against a Daily Collegian photographer who was arrested while on assignment photographing the Oct. 25 riot following a Penn State football team victory over Ohio State.
Citing “unclear” evidence, Centre County Judge David E. Grine dismissed the failure to disperse charge against the photographer, Michael R. Felletter, according to Grine’s ruling.
“The justice system did its part,” Felletter (senior-visual journalism) said. “Hopefully, journalists will feel freer to go out and gather the news without fearing they’ll be charged for breaking the law.”
Now Centre County officials are reviewing Grine’s ruling to determine whether to appeal or re-file the charges against Felletter, Centre County District Attorney Michael Madeira wrote in an e-mail.
Felletter photographed the riot, during which thousands of Penn State students flooded Beaver Canyon. Police initially arrested 14 people in connection with the incident.
Police said Felletter’s photographing caused the crowd to become “more exuberant, excited and destructive,” according to the criminal complaint.
(more…)
Sara Ganim – sganim@centredaily.com
Thursday, Jul. 23, 2009
A Daily Collegian photographer charged with inciting revelers during the October downtown State College riot has been cleared of any wrongdoing by a judge.
Michael Felletter had fought the two misdemeanor charges — filed by police who said his pictures were making the crowd act more rowdy and that he did not leave the scene when police ordered — on First Amendment grounds.
“In the U.S., we don’t arrest the press for covering major events and protests,” said Felletter’s attorney, Andy Shubin, who called the case “doomed from the beginning.”
In the July 23, 2009, Philadelphia Inquirer
BELLEFONTE, Pa. – A judge dismissed the remaining misdemeanor charge against a photographer for the independent campus newspaper at Penn State in connection with an unruly fan celebration in State College.
Prosecutors had dropped five of six misdemeanors against photographer Michael Felletter earlier this year following the Oct. 25 disturbance after the Nittany Lions’ football win at Ohio State.
A sixth count, for failing to disperse, was dismissed Wednesday by a Centre County judge.
Felletter’s lawyer (Andrew Shubin, from State College, PA) said the student was just doing his job as a member of the press.
Authorities had initially charged about 20 people in connection with the disturbance, and several were charged with felony riot.
Although an extensive debate between Penn State Judicial Affairs and Olivia Guevara ended last week, the motives behind her prosecution are still being questioned.
Over the past five months, Guevara, a graduate student in the department of labor, has repeatedly challenged Penn State’s decision to prosecute her for vandalism and accused the university of singling her out to squelch her anti-sweatshop activism.
The battle has grown to involve 48 professors, labor departments from other universities, labor unions, concerned students from across the country and a local attorney who said Guevara’s First Amendment rights were at risk.
The charges stem from an incident on Sept. 27, when Guevara and several other activists chalked anti-sweatshop messages on several university buildings, including Old Main. Criminal charges against Guevara were dismissed because of a lack of evidence. However, Judicial Affairs asked for damage fees and issued a seven-year citation on her academic record.
Penn State officials have maintained that Guevara’s Judicial Affairs hearing was fair and that her prosecution was solely a matter of vandalism.
Last night, a national organization aiming to reform marijuana laws hosted its first Rally in the Valley discussion in 101 Thomas to raise awareness about legal concerns involving marijuana.
“We want to inform people about this issue and have some positive conversations about the marijuana issue,” Jason Bundy, co-president of the National Organization for the Reformation of Marijuana Laws (NORML), said.
Bundy told about 30 people that NORML is a resource for those who need legal advice, as well as an organization that promotes legislation to reform marijuana laws.
Andrew Shubin, a criminal defense attorney, was present to give legal advice concerning marijuana laws.
Shubin explained that a school zone has much harsher consequences for felonies than any other area.
“If you are within 1,000 feet of any part of Penn State University, whether it’s the 18th hole of the golf course, a garage that Penn State owns, the high school or a playground, that’s a school zone,” he said. “That’s basically all of State College.”
The mandatory minimum sentence for possession of marijuana is two to four years in a school zone, compared to probation to one month anywhere else, Shubin said.
“That’s the difference one foot can make,” he said.
Shubin gave advice on what to do if confronted by a police officer.
“Be courteous. … The first thing you should do is assert your right to counsel,” he said. “And without your consent, an officer needs a warrant to search your house.”
A big topic of the discussion was the use of student informants in drug busts.
Sam Richards, senior lecturer in sociology, said that a petition opposing the use of student informants in drug busts
was circulated among faculty members in the early ’90s, and only about 5 percent of the faculty did not sign it.
“It’s just not the kind of campus you want to create,” he said.
Shubin said the biggest problem at Penn State is not marijuana, but rather alcohol abuse and its “collateral crimes,” such as domestic abuse and drunk driving.
Nick Drewchin (freshman-economics) said that “everyone from Graham Spanier to the middle school kids at Mount Nittany … knows that kids in the frats get wasted, and then sexual assault happens.”
Richards said one of the concerns with the legality of marijuana is that there is not a national discussion about it.
“If I asked you how much marijuana is takes to get high, no one would know,” he said. “But we could all probably agree on how many drinks it takes to get drunk.”
Bundy said the idea that no amount of marijuana is lethal could be dangerous without any guidance.
“If you know no amount is toxic, how do you set your limits?” he said.
Bundy said that marijuana laws are based on “the worst of us, not the most of us.”
“There is a difference between use and abuse,” he said, adding that the group does not promote abuse.
Criminal charges were dropped after the convention. Activists called the situation unfair, a double standard.
By Daryl Lang
Collegian Staff Writer
Penn State is considering whether to punish three students who refused police orders to leave a university building during a July protest, the students said yesterday.
The students said the situation is unfair because their case has already been heard in court and the criminal charges against them were all dismissed.
“It’s just a pathetic attempt to try to pin something on us,” said Justin Leto (senior-computer engineering), who organized the protest.
The protest is the third recent incident in which Penn State’s Office of Judicial Affairs has taken on a controversial legal matter, including a case when the office declined to punish a football player charged with assault.
Penn State spokesman Bill Mahon said yesterday that the university’s judicial process concerns whether students broke a university rule, something separate from a criminal charge.
The three student demonstrators — Leto, Robyn Stephens (senior-sociology) and Michelle Yates (junior-women’s studies) — each were called to meet with the director of judicial affairs. The meetings took place over the last two weeks.
Each declined to admit any wrongdoing and will have their case decided at judicial hearings that have yet to be scheduled.
Working as a group called “Redirection 2000″, the students waved signs and banners on July 10 to protest the failure of the National Governors’ Association Annual Meeting to respond to the menu of causes they support.
Several students climbed through a second-floor window in order to hang a sign on a balcony facing a governors event at the HUB-Robeson Center. Penn State Police Services ordered the students to leave and arrested five of them.
“Being on the ledge wasn’t something the university approved of, and it wasn’t safe,” said Mahon, who said he was present at the demonstration.
After their arrest, police charged all five students with “defiant trespass.”
At a July 20 preliminary hearing, District Justice Daniel Hoffman dismissed all the charges against the demonstrators.
But recently, three of the students were called before Joseph Puzycki, Penn State’s director of judicial affairs, for disciplinary action.
Penn State accused Leto, Stephens and Yates of “failure to comply with a directive” and “unauthorized use of university buildings/facilities,” the students said in a statement.
Penn State never figured out who the other two arrested demonstrators were, Leto said.
Puzycki allowed State College attorney Andy Shubin, who is representing the students free of charge, to sit in on one of the meetings, Shubin said.
Shubin wonders why the university keeps pursuing the case even after court testimony July 20 from Penn State University Relations Executive Director Steve MacCarthy. The students said MacCarthy had given them permission to be in the building.
“What’s upsetting here is that the university’s official and the top guy on the scene has already testified under oath,” Shubin said. “That testimony essentially exonerates them from any wrongdoing. . . . Of course, the university is a large institution and maybe the left hand isn’t talking to the right hand.”
In a mix of education and activism, hundreds of students gathered on the Old Main lawn yesterday afternoon to wave signs and hear political speeches.
The event, called the “March for Democracy,” featured six speakers and a group of actors. The audience followed the speakers as they walked from Old Main lawn to the HUB lawn and back.
Sam Richards, a senior lecturer in sociology who helped organize the march, called the gathering a “classroom without walls,” and many of the students were there as part of an assignment in one of his classes.
But among messages about how big businesses control the government, cheering students gave the event the feel of a political rally.
“This march is about coming together and talking about ways in which we can empower ourselves,” Richards told the crowd through a bullhorn. “The system can change . . . It has changed in the past and it will change in the future.”
Speakers encouraged students to participate more in government, wrestling control away from the rich and spreading it among everyone equally.
“You may feel like the minority,” said Ken Clarke, director for the Penn State Center for Ethics and Religious Affairs. “But it has always been the creative minorities, as Martin Luther King, Jr., reminds us, who are at the vanguard of significant social and spiritual change.”
Thomas Bugaj says his seized T-shirt’s message is protected political speech.
A Penn State student cited last month for wearing a “Fuck Petrol” T-shirt on College Avenue says State College Police violated his free speech rights.
Police cited Thomas Bugaj, 22, on Sept. 21 for disorderly conduct and confiscated his shirt.
Bugaj (senior-sculpture) wore the homemade shirt during a Critical Mass bike rally in celebration of World Car-Free Day. His blue shirt with black lettering supported international demonstrators, particularly in Great Britain and France, where union members have been protesting high fuel costs, Bugaj said.
Although he has a driver’s license for identification purposes, Bugaj said he bikes everywhere.
“I don’t drive a car,” he said.
The shirt was a protected form of political speech, and some local lawyers and civil rights activists agree with him, Bugaj said.
Several students protested his citation during the First Amendment Festival Tuesday.
Andy Shubin, a local American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, said Bugaj’s shirt — and the obscenity written on it — is protected because it was a political message.
OPYRIGHT 2007 Financial Times Ltd.
(From University Wire)
Byline: Alyssa Owens
Although an extensive debate between Pennsylvania State University Judicial Affairs and Olivia Guevara ended last week, the motives behind her prosecution are still being questioned.
Over the past five months, Guevara, a graduate student in the department of labor, has repeatedly challenged Penn State’s decision to prosecute her for vandalism and accused the university of singling her out to squelch her anti-sweatshop activism.
The battle has grown to involve 48 professors, labor departments from other universities, labor unions, concerned students from across the country and a local attorney who said Guevara’s First Amendment rights were at risk.
The charges stem from an incident on Sept. 27, when Guevara and several other activists chalked anti-sweatshop messages on several university buildings, including Old Main. Criminal charges against Guevara were dismissed because of a lack of evidence. However, Judicial Affairs asked for damage fees and issued a seven-year citation on her academic record.
