Plea deals for six of the 13 University affiliates arrested for occupying Clio Hall in April were rejected by Princeton Municipal Court Judge John McCarthy III ’69 on Tuesday. The seven other protesters have already opted to not take the deal and proceed to trial.
The agreement, proposed by Municipal Prosecutor Christopher Koutsouris, would have entailed a guilty plea to a municipal noise ordinance, avoiding the current charge of defiant trespassing. McCarthy took issue with an allegation from witnesses in Clio that one protester told staff in the building that they had 60 seconds to leave, first reported in the Princeton Alumni Weekly.
“I don’t think it’s an appropriate factual basis [for] what you did,” McCarthy said to Sara Ryave ’24, the first defendant to request a plea deal. “I am not going to grant this plea agreement. Sorry. I admire your courage, I admire your conviction.”
“I think it is wildly bizarre to reject this deal on this supposed basis of ‘fairness and justice,’” Brooklyn Northcross ’24, who was also planning to take the deal, wrote to The Daily Princetonian. Northcross noted that she no longer lives on the East Coast after graduating in the spring. She attended Tuesday’s hearing over Zoom, alongside Khari Franklin ’24 and Kristal Grant ’24, who both hoped to enter plea deals as well.
While McCarthy rejected the deal at the conclusion of the hearing, Koutsouris — who helped negotiate the deal — noted that the deal is not officially off the table.
“I cannot speak for the Judge, but I would imagine that the Judge will contemplate the plea agreement and perform some independent legal analysis and make a determination whether he will accept the plea agreement advanced for the Defendant(s),” Koutsouris wrote to the ‘Prince.’
Ryave, who was put under oath by McCarthy and faced extensive questioning by luck of the draw, said someone had asked the staff to leave, but did not confirm the countdown. She also said that the protesters entered Clio seeking a meeting with Rodney Priestly, the Dean of the Graduate School.
“[We] felt that our best way that we could use our voices was to pressure the University to divest its financial holdings from Israeli companies and Israeli institutions,” she explained regarding their decision to occupy Priestly’s office.
“When he was not there, we chose to stay inside of his office, and we asked University staff members to leave,” she said.
After answering McCarthy’s questions for approximately 15 minutes, Ryave was embraced in a hug by her fellow defendants.
Aditi Rao GS, another student arrested at Clio, also denied that an explicit countdown had been given.
“Many of us might remember somebody saying that the staff should leave the space, but it was never a directive about time,” she said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’
McCarthy expressed dismay about potentially approving a plea deal for the person who may have given the countdown. He said that person who gave the countdown “expects to have a plea deal for a noise ordinance. That is not coming from this court.”
Ryave, Northcross, Franklin, Grant, Ariel Edelman GS, and Christian Silva, a student at the Princeton Theological Seminary, all requested that their cases be resolved with the deal. Rao, along with Christian Bischoff GS, Hellen Wainaina GS, Andres Blanco Bonilla ’24, Jacob Neis GS, Sofia Menemenlis GS, and postdoctoral researcher Sam Nastase opted not to take a deal, instead having their cases proceed to trial.
McCarthy’s rejection of the six protesters’ pleas came after multiple hours of procedural debate over attorney Aymen Aboushi’s ability to represent all 13 defendants. Under New Jersey court regulations, lawyers must secure permission from the court to represent multiple defendants via a motion made in the presence of all the clients. Additionally, a court professional conduct rule mandates that attorneys must inform their clients of potential conflicts of interest that come with representing multiple individuals.
After back-and-forth between Aboushi and McCarthy about the matter, each of the 13 defendants answered a series of questions from the judge to confirm that Aboushi informed them of the issues that could arise from him representing multiple defendants.
The hearing then proceeded to the question of a plea deal, finishing just before 6 p.m. after a 2:30 p.m. start time.
“These drawn out proceedings have left some of us who have graduated or are soon to graduate from Princeton with little reasonable option but to seek a plea agreement to resolve the case and move on with their lives,” the arrested students wrote in a joint statement to the ‘Prince.’
The University declined to comment on the outcome of the hearing.
McCarthy is expected to reject the plea deals at the pre-trial conference, currently set for Nov. 5. The six protesters will have to decide whether to plead guilty to the original defiant trespassing charge, successfully negotiate a different deal, or go to trial.
Miriam Waldvogel is an associate News editor and the investigations editor for the ‘Prince.’ She is from Stockton, Calif. and often covers campus activism and University accountability.
Olivia Sanchez is an associate News editor for the ‘Prince.’ She is from New Jersey and often covers the graduate school and academic departments.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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