Three demonstrators arrested during last year’s pro-Palestinian protest at Emory University pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges their attorneys said are politically motivated.
More than two dozen people, including students and some faculty, were detained in April 2024 as police and state troopers clashed with protesters at the private university.
Nearly 15 months later, three of the four remaining defendants appeared at the DeKalb County Courthouse alongside more than a dozen supporters.
Alexander Carson, Sebastian Cadiz Garcia and Erica Schneider pleaded not guilty to two counts each of criminal trespass. Schneider, who said she was injured when officers tackled her to the ground last year, also faces an obstruction charge.
Onlookers inside Judge Mike Jacobs’ courtroom were instructed to quiet down after Carson’s attorney said he took issue with the term “occupy” in his client’s charges.
Defense attorney Musa Ghanayem, who is a Palestinian American, requested that the judge read those charges aloud.
Carson was accused of “occupying a restricted area of campus” at Emory, Jacobs said, reading from the charging document.
“I guess occupation is only legal when the powers that be allow it, right?” Ghanayem said. “I see the reason that these children have been arrested. And I see that occupation is illegal in this country, but we support it in other countries.”
His response elicited a smattering of cheers and applause from pro-Palestinian supporters seated in the gallery, prompting one deputy to call for order in the courtroom.
Jacobs cautioned the gallery that “the judiciary is not a political branch of government.”
“My job here is to process these cases efficiently,” he said. “We do need to maintain order in the court.”
Neither Carson nor Schneider was a student at Emory last year, but both said Wednesday they felt the need to speak up about the mounting civilian death toll in Gaza.
“We have done nothing wrong,” Carson said at a small rally before the hearing. He stood in front of a banner that read “protesting is not a crime.”
Credit: Shaddi Abusaid/ shaddi.abusaid@ajc.com
Credit: Shaddi Abusaid/ shaddi.abusaid@ajc.com
Emory President Gregory Fenves came under fire last year for what some students and professors called a “heavy-handed” crackdown on an otherwise peaceful protest. Gov. Brian Kemp signaled support for the response to campus encampments at the time as similar crackdowns occurred at universities across the U.S.
A spokesperson for the DeKalb County solicitor-general’s office said Wednesday that of the 28 people initially arrested or cited at Emory, 23 have been referred to diversion or had their charges dismissed. Another has a case pending with the city of Atlanta.
Attorney LaRhonda Nicks, who represents both Schneider and Cadiz Garcia, said she thinks her clients’ charges should be dropped, too.
She likened the case to the upcoming racketeering trial centered on opponents of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center. She is also representing one of the defendants in that case.
“In this political climate, it’s most definitely part of a bigger agenda,” Nicks said.
While both cases involve political activism and the First Amendment, Nicks said she feels that charges are often doled out based on “what someone is protesting.”
The defendants were told to return to court Sept. 25.
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