Stop the Witchhunt—No. 5

Ann Arbor Youth Gets Charged with "Riot" for Refusing to Snitch

Drop the Charges Against Ryan Lang! Fighting Racism Is Not a Crime!

 
Ryan Lang, a 16-year-old Ann Arbor antiracist, is facing the 10-year felony "riot" charge for being present at the protest of the KKK rally on May 9, 1998 and for refusing to be a police snitch against his friends. The jury selection for Ryan’s trial will begin Tuesday, June 1 at 8:30AM; the trial will begin Wednesday, June 2 at 8:30AM in Judge Brown’s courtroom in the downtown courthouse.

Ryan, like many youth in Ann Arbor, was outraged that the Ku Klux Klan had come to his town. First he went to Wheeler Park and participated in the events there, listening to bands with other high school and middle school youth. Then, along with other youth who had gone to Wheeler Park first, he went to city hall to the site of the KKK rally to join with the youth there directly protesting the appeals of the Klan for racist violence and genocide.

Ryan is being prosecuted simply because he made a decision to stand shoulder to shoulder with other youth trying to keep the Klan from spreading to Ann Arbor the kind of hate and violence that led to the murder of James Byrd in Jasper, Texas just a few weeks after the KKK rally in Ann Arbor and the massacre of high school students that happened on April 20 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.

Police photographs of the anti-KKK protest show Ryan present at the rally doing nothing but standing around, skateboard in hand. In the several hundred pages of police reports there is not a single witness who claims to have seen Ryan do anything illegal.

Ryan has faced a pattern of harassment from the Ann Arbor Police Department; he has received a large number of tickets for the sort of petty things many youth get harassed for in Ann Arbor, like skateboarding. He is now facing the very serious charge of "riot". The attack on Ryan is an important test case on the democratic rights of youth.

The process by which the police ended up charging Ryan with a 10-year felony was cynical in the extreme and illustrates the unscrupulous and overreaching character of the witchhunt against the antiracist protesters. For the Ann Arbor Police Department, Ryan is a stand-in for every youth who attended the protest of the KKK at city hall.

The police decided to bring the felony "riot" charge against Ryan only after he refused to identify other youth in police photographs to detectives.

Using felony charges against a then 15-year-old as retribution for refusing to be disloyal to his friends is shameful, cynical behavior on the part of the AAPD, the Washtenaw Co. Prosecutor and the city government. The prosecution’s intention is presumably to try to make up for what they lack in evidence with a presentation of irrelevant and prejudicial stereotypes about youth.

Everyone who cares about civil liberties, youth rights and opposes the genocide plans of the KKK should be at the courthouse to support Ryan against this prosecution.
 

HEARING ON EVIDENCE DESTROYED BY POLICE

The last round of court hearings, in addition to securing some delay from threatened June trial dates in the non-juvenile felonies, also won an evidentiary hearing in the bulk of the misdemeanor charges.

On Friday, July 16, at 1:30PM the misdemeanor defendants who are accused of having damaged a chain link rental fence will have an evidentiary hearing. This will be a turning point in the whole set of witchhunt prosecutions.

Given the fact that the only physical evidence in these cases was destroyed with the authorization of the police, the evidentiary hearing to determine whether and if so, when, how, where and by whom the fence was damaged should prove very difficult for the prosecution.
 

NO EVIDENCE & NO RECORD

The police and prosecutor’s office are claiming that the fence was damaged, but the police department never made any assessment of the condition of the fence. The fence company made a casual and entirely cursory assessment of the fence. Knowing they had a standard blank-check insurance policy from the city for any assessment of material loss – they had a financial incentive to bend the stick in the direction of assessing damage. No record was ever made of the alleged damage by either the police or the fence company. No video, no still photographs, not so much as a leaf from a police notebook is to be found in the extensive police reports that documents the damage that defendants are alleged to have caused.

The police then allowed the subject of these charges to be scrapped and melted down, leaving only the bill from the fence company as "evidence" of damage.

witchhunt, n. A political campaign launched on the pretext of investigating activities subversive to the state. Houghton Mifflin 1995.

witchhunt, n. search for witch(es), (fig.) search for suspected Communists or other persons with unorthodox views. Oxford University 1976.

witchhunt, n. an intensive effort to discover and expose disloyalty, subversion, dishonesty, or the like, usually based on slight, doubtful, or irrelevant evidence. Random House 1980.

This bill is now the lynch pin of ten misdemeanor charges. The fence company, of course, could have no notion that the bill they wrote up on the basis of this cursory assessment of the condition of the fence would later be the central piece of evidence in criminal charges against ten people. Now the company has a vested interest in maintaining the position that the fence was damaged.

Police photographs of the fence after the rally, still images secured from police video, eyewitness affidavits of neutral observers, including several Peace Team members, and an expert witness affidavit from the owner/operator of a fence company who viewed the fence in question on multiple police videos all indicate that there was no damage done to the rental fence. In fact, the Peace Team re-erected the fence after it was pulled from the poles by the counter-demonstrators.

Justice, common sense and law dictate the impossibility of proceeding without this evidence.

- May 29, 1999

 

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Ann Arbor Antiracist Defense Campaign
National Women’s Rights Organizing Coalition

PO Box 1092 Penobscot Station, Detroit, MI. 48231  (313) 730-3577

www.umich.edu/~nwroc * nwroc@umich.edu