Rahman, aka Olugbala, outside court
…can be found here.
And here …
Wali Rahman spent yesterday morning with sign-waving supporters and a bullhorn. He yelled toward the Criminal Justice Center that “killer cops and dirty judges” should be jailed and that the mayor, district attorney and police commissioner were waging “war on the black community.”
He spent the afternoon in Courtroom 803 where, after a quirky trial, Judge Roxanne Covington convicted Rahman (aka Diop Olugaba) and Franklin Moses in connection with a Council Chambers balcony uproar during the mayor’s March 2009 budget address.
The case hinged on slow-motion video. In it, Moses’ yelling leads security and Civil Affairs officers to the balcony. Rahman then urges supporters to stand when told to sit. That leads to an eviction scuffle in which police Sgt. Derek Grant is shown grabbing Rahman’s sign, arm and throat. Rahman steps into a two-handed shove. He flails while being wrestled down. It’s unclear whether he’s punching. Attorney Michael Coard said he’s never seen doing so. Police testified he did while Moses tried to elude another officer’s grasp. Grant suffered a sprained shoulder that, he testified, put him out of work for two months.
Rahman and Moses were convicted of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest misdemeanors. Rahman was also convicted of felony aggravated assault and reckless endangerment. They’ll be sentenced Oct. 13.
The case was a lot weirder than I could fit into so few words. People got thrown out of the courtroom for sleeping. The judge stopped and asked whether there were any children in the room because of noises she was hearing (there weren’t). She threw someone out for talking when he wasn’t and when Coard vouched for him, sent a sheriff’s officer out into the hallway to invite him back in. He was too pissed off to return.
But from a case perspective, seemed to me that Rahman only lunged when he felt like he was being choked. We watched the video in slo-mo multiple times. There’s no question about it. But the judge went felony because he shoved (and purportedly punched) a “protected-class” cop near a flimsy piece of (I think) Plexiglass separating them from a story fall.
Afterwards, Rahman — who garnered headlines for shouting Obama down during a Florida campaign appearance — told me the conviction is emblematic of everything he was shouting outside. All I know is this: the charges may line up with the letter of the law, but the letter of the law doesn’t line up with being backed into a defend-yourself situation in these cases.
Here’s a grainier version of the video …
Here’s the District Attorney spokeswoman Tasha Jamerson’s statement that I called and asked for pre-trial in reaction to the protest outside the CJC …
“Mr. Rahman, like any other defendant charged by the Commonwealth, will have his chance to respond to the charges against him in open court. There was enough evidence against the defendant to arrest him and hold him for court on Aggravated Assault and other related offenses. It is now up to a jury of his peers to decide if there is enough evidence to convict him of those charges.”