Nearly a year after Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery was arrested in Ferguson, Missouri during the Michael Brown protests, formal charges were filed against him, the paper reported Monday.
Lowery was charged with trespassing on private property and interfering with a police officer’s performance of his duties — according to the Washington Post — in a court summons dated August 6. The summons ordered him to appear in a St. Louis County municipal court on August 24 or face arrest.
Lowery was arrested in a McDonald’s restaurant near the protests in Ferguson along with Huffington Post reporter (and TPM alum) Ryan Reilly last August. According to their accounts, the two reporters were working in the fast food restaurant when police demanded everyone vacate the premises and they were treated roughly once law enforcement realized they were attempting to record the encounter. Their arrests made national news.
Reilly told the Washington Post Monday he had not received a summons yet but was expecting to be charged as well.
Lowery joked on Twitter that the charges meant Reilly won a bet the two had going:
for what it’s worth: @ryanjreilly and I had a bet about whether or not we’d get charged (statute of limitations was a year). Ryan won
— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) August 10, 2015
Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron blasted the charges against his reporter.
“Charging a reporter with trespassing and interfering with a police officer when he was just doing his job is outrageous,” Baron said in a statement, according to the Post.
“This latest action represents contemptible overreaching by prosecutors who seem to have no regard for the role of journalists seeking to cover a major story and following normal practice,” Baron said.
So they obviously DON’T respect the First Amendment. Private property trespassing? So are they saying McDonald’s or its franchisee filed a trespassing complaint against journalist which I may point our were paying clientele? Anyone that have seen that video can clearly see the police was completely outta line.
Why the charges were filed now should be a story in itself.
So was McDonald’s pressing trespassing charges (it was their property)…?
I highly doubt that.
Something smells.
So St. Louis County is looking to have a counter-suit for reckless persecution? They must have plenty of money.
I suspect because that’s how the clerks work there. The computer flagged the complaint as expiring, the clerk, without even looking into it, just started the process to get them into court to pay their fine. It probably never even dawned on anyone there who these guys were or what the charges were about. Just arrested around that time, so more of the locals we rounded up, so lets bleed them for a little more.
The charges are ridiculous; they had made purchases at the McDonald’s, from the videos, nobody there was expressing any desire for them to leave (until the cops busted in). So the trespassing charge is going to be tossed. Interfering with a police officer won’t hold up either, outside of their little kangaroo court. They complied with the officer’s orders, but more importantly, the First Amendment arguments are going to be clearly on their side.
I suspect once a judge or prosecutor figures out which case these actually were (which one would hope they have by now), a letter dismissing all charges will be forth coming before the week is out. Even city solicitors don’t enjoy losing, and definitely not what will be a highly publicized case.