After deliberating for 90 minutes, a DeKalb County jury Wednesday night found the mother arrested in a fracas over her baby at the Decatur public library guilty of obstructing a law enforcement officer.
Donnetta Foster was sentenced to 12 months: Two days in jail with credit for two days already served, and the remainder of the sentence on probation.
Judge Janis C. Gordon told Foster she also would have to perform 40 hours of community service and attend three parenting classes, three child impact classes, three "Alternative Path for Women" classes, and a day-long intensive anger management class.
Foster could have gotten up to a year in jail.
In a statement issued Wednesday night, DeKalb Solicitor-General Sherry Boston said, "The bottom line is that this defendant was given a simple, lawful command to leave the library more than a dozen times by a police sergeant who was using a clear and calm voice."
Foster, in response, "ranted, vented, complained and cursed" for 48 minutes and refused to obey the officer, leaving him "no choice but to arrest the defendant," Boston said.
In a statement issued after the verdict, Foster's attorney, Mawuli Mel Davis, said, "As 20-year-old college student, (Foster) did not want a criminal conviction, she had to fight. She will still move forward and make a better life for her and her son.
"She thanks all the people that have supported her," Davis said. "It is truly unfortunate that this even went this far."
The confrontation with library staff and police began when the woman's 14-month-old son made noises.
“I was loud,” Foster told the jury during testimony at her trial Wednesday afternoon. “I said a few [curse words]. I’m embarrassed. But I felt like I had been wronged by the library and wanted the officer to help.”
Library officials had Foster tossed out Oct. 11. after her son Savon laughed as she used a computer.
Earlier in the day, Assistant DeKalb Solicitor General Timothy Owens described the charge to jurors as “knowingly and willfully refusing to obey an officer.”
When Foster left the library, as was heard during an approximately 50-minute audio recording played for the court, the woman was boisterous and argumentative, at times challenging the police called to the scene or shouting out her concerns to passers-by. At other times, she remained quiet.
“When you didn’t hear me, I was crying,” she said, her eyes welling up on the stand. “There were some points where the situation just overwhelmed me.”
At issue is whether she followed, to the letter, the instructions of Decatur police Sgt. Renneth Beaupierre to leave the library. He said after giving her a written criminal trespassing warning, Foster left, but returned.
She said she went to the recreation center next door to the library when Beaupierre instructed her to do so.
“I told people I was kicked out of the library because my baby was crying and … and Sgt. Beaupierre took a football stance and ran at me where I was standing in front of the rec center,” she said, “and they arrested me.”
Beaupierre insisted, from the witness stand, that he made every attempt to be fair and hear Foster out.
“It probably went further than I should’ve allowed it,” he said. “But I wanted to give her a chance to express herself.”
Beaupierre also admitted that he told her that what she had to say about the incident “wasn’t important.”
Foster argued, however, that she spoke to the policeman from a public sidewalk in front of the library, and didn’t realize that behaving as she did was a problem.
“I didn’t know it was against the law just to talk,” she said.
But assistant solicitor-general A’Sheika Penn challenged Foster’s admission during cross-examination, alluding to criminal disorderly conduct charges that initially were lodged against Foster.
“Are you familiar with the concept that ignorance of the law is no excuse?” she asked Foster.
“No,” Foster replied.
The incident began when Foster went to the library to download some information onto a jump drive for a job interview the next day.
She said that when Savon made giggling noises during the 15 minutes she was at the computer, a security guard was sent over to her by reference librarians to ask her to be quiet.
On a third occasion, as the guard returned to ask her to leave, Foster said her computer was shut down from the reference desk. When she confronted a library supervisor, police were called to escort her out.
“She wouldn’t give the woman a moment to speak,” Owens said in his closing arguments.
As she left, she encountered Beaupierre, who was calling dispatch to send an additional car.
“If she becomes disorderly, we’ll arrest her and call DFCS,” he admitted to saying, suggesting the state Department of Family and Children Services would be needed to take her son.
That, Foster admitted, was one of the things that upset her. Her attorney, Mawuli Mel Davis, pointed to this when suggesting the police sergeant made matters worse.
“Do you consider that de-escalating?” he asked Beaupierre.
As Foster was questioned by Penn, she described what she’d hoped would happen.
“All she had to do is hand me a paper to make a complaint,” Foster said, sobbing. “That’s now how I would’ve behaved if the situation had been handled differently.”
Owens said Foster failed to take responsibility for her actions.
“She made this into this situation,” he told the jury in his closing arguments. “You can’t be in the library if you can’t behave yourself. She wanted to be heard? You heard her for 50 minutes.”
Davis, however, questioned whether the charge was valid, if Foster did what she was told.
“While she may have complied slowly, she did comply,” he said. “When she’s out there yelling and screaming and he tells her to go to the rec center, she goes.”
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