Unlawful Assembly or Resisting Arrest?

May 11, 1998

Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government.
-- Pierre Joseph Proudhon

There has been a surprising development in the case of the Sea World 28. These are the animal rights activists arrested on April 5 for protesting on the public right-of-way near the marine park's front gate without a permit from Orange County.

Right before their arraignment in Ocoee on May 6 the charged protesters learned that the Orange-Osceola State Attorney's Office had dropped the charges of "unlawful assembly" against all the arrestees, replacing those with charges of resisting arrest without violence. This charge can entail simply asking an officer questions or verbally disputing his right to arrest you.

Originally, only about a quarter of the activists, many of whom belong to Campus Action for Animals at the University of Central Florida and the Orlando Food Not Bombs chapter, had faced the resisting arrest charge, in addition to the unlawful assembly charge.

The state attorney's action raises an interesting question: how can someone still be charged with resisting arrest when the charge which they allegedly had been resisting arrest for has been dropped?

An even more interesting question is: why were the unlawful assembly charges dropped? Was it concerns about challenges to the constitutionality of the ordinance (triggered by the presence of more than 25 people) that might have arisen during a trial? If a judge or jury had refused to convict the activists on that charge, that would have opened the door to lawsuits against the Orange County Sheriff's Office and Sheriff Kevin Beary for unlawful imprisonment and violating the First Amendment guarantee of "the right of the people peaceably to assemble."

Indeed if the activists, who were protesting what they consider the exploitation of marine animals, are found not guilty during their trial or if a judge throws the charges out before the trial, there may still be a basis for lawsuits. Those lawsuits, if successful, could cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. This would be on top of the money already wasted by the sheriff's office and the court system on arrests of absolutely no value to maintaining public safety. For instance, the claim I saw in at least one arrest report that the protestors were "obstructing" traffic strikes me as patently false. There are laws against obstructing traffic, laws that could, unlike the unlawful assembly ordinance, pass constitutional muster. So why weren't those used, if public safety was the real concern? Obstructing traffic is certainly a more serious act than "unlawful" assembly.

This unlawful assembly ordinance and its use against the Sea World 28 should concern all citizens.

Why should you need government permission to exercise a right guaranteed by the Constitution? Obviously, there's no right to protest on private property, but we're talking about public property here - sidewalks and the right of way.

According to one local animal-rights activist, Orange County's permit form for public assemblies is seven pages long, and requires a $25 fee. Not only does this seem burdensome beyond reason, but requiring citizens to pay in order to exercise their rights is undemocratic and contradictory.

If you need permission to exercise a right once it's been granted, is it really a right? Or is it just a privilege that the government can deny as it sees fit?

The Sea World 28 are bravely asking the court to allow them to act as their own lawyers with the "assistance of counsel." This means they want to represent themselves, but have someone with legal knowledge present to advise them, rooted in the Sixth Amendment right of "the accused ... to have the assistance of counsel for his defense." A hearing will be held on the activists' request in this matter on May 26.

If you want to do something to defend the Sea World 28, polite letters to the state attorney condemning the violation of First Amendment rights and asking him to drop the resisting arrest charges would help. His address is: State Attorney Lawson Lamar, P.O. Box 1673, Orlando, FL 32802. Letters to the Orlando Weekly and the Orlando Sentinel would also help.

--Ben Markeson

Ben Markeson
I'm a first-generation Floridian, a second-generation American, a college drop-out and have a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-corporate bent. I edited and published two local "alternative" newspapers - The Orlando Collegian and The Orlando Spectator (three if you count The Orlando Reporter, which had one paper issue before becoming an e-zine), and also free-lanced for The Orlando Weekly. But I don't call myself a journalist because that sounds pretentious.