The 13 University affiliates arrested at Clio Hall during pro-Palestine protests last spring are scheduled to go to trial starting on April 14, almost one year after the Clio Hall sit-in. The latest development at a hearing on Tuesday followed months of court proceedings and came after the collapse of yet another plea deal that would have allowed 12 of the arrested protesters to walk away with community service while singling out the other.
All the arrestees are charged with defiant criminal trespassing, a petty offense in the state of New Jersey. The defense attorney for those arrested in the spring, Aymen Aboushi, claimed that a change to a new agreement with the municipal prosecutor, Christopher Koutsouris, had been made in the days before the 14th.
“The offer was that 12 individuals would be dismissed from this case in exchange for agreeing to do a period of community service, and one person would be offered a conditional discharge. If that person did not want to accept it, then that person would be afforded their right to a trial,” said defense attorney Aymen Aboushi at the start of the pre-trial conference. This one person was Aditi Rao GS, a prominent figure in the protests last year.
Jacob Neis GS, another one of the students arrested last year, explained that Aboushi held individual calls with each of the defendants to explain the offer of dismissal in exchange for community service. However, according to Neis, “the prosecutor or the state had identified one student that they had thought was a ringleader. They intended to continue to prosecute this person.”
According to Neis, Koutsouris then called Aboushi on Monday night, clarifying that if Rao did not plead guilty, then the dismissal of the case against the other 12 was off the table.
“[I] only found out late yesterday afternoon that the State was reversing course and was taking the all or none position,” Aboushi told the court.
Koutsouris, however, said there was no change in the deal. “The state’s position is now just like it has been, that the individual who the state has identified as having the most responsibility by committing the most egregious conduct in the allegation of the state needs to take responsibility,” he stated. Koutsouris did not respond to a series of follow-up questions posed by The Daily Princetonian over email.
Aboushi, Koutsouris, and Judge John McCarthy III ’69 also discussed the matter with a University lawyer prior to the hearing.
“The University was approving of a resolution along those lines for these students, and the University had no objection whatsoever if this was going to be resolved that way,” Aboushi said of the meeting. University spokesperson Jennifer Morrill wrote in a statement to the ‘Prince’ that the University’s “outside counsel” joined at the judge’s request.
“Beyond these restatements of the University’s position, the University has not been involved in negotiations between the parties in this case and is not a party to the case,” she wrote.
Judge John McCarthy III invited Aboushi to submit a brief to the court asking for the cases to be dismissed, but otherwise seemed skeptical and moved to set trial dates for April 14, 15, and 16.
Neis told the ‘Prince’ he hoped the case does not go to trial and that the University recommends a dismissal to the prosecution. “My understanding is that, as the alleged victim in this case, it’s always been in their power to say that they don’t want to participate in a trial, and in that case, the prosecutor would have no choice but to dismiss the charges,” he said.
In an interview with the ‘Prince,’ Rao said she did not want to plead guilty to avoid setting “a really damning and dangerous precedent.”
“In order to just let one person take the fall ultimately would undo the work that we did to build solidarity,” said Rao. However, she added that “it was actually really difficult to relate back to Mr. Aboushi that I was going to continue to plead not guilty,” she said, citing that many other students “really need those cases dismissed.”
“I’m kind of baffled by the singling out of one student as a leader, because going into Clio Hall was a decision we made collectively,” said Neis, reflecting on the deal.
A previous plea deal for the protesters was scuttled in October after McCarthy raised concerns that one of the arrestees had allegedly given staff inside of Clio a countdown. He also questioned one of the protesters under oath about potential leadership in the occupation of Clio.
Neis and Rao both expressed concern over the length of the court proceedings, especially for students who graduated last spring.
“They live out of state. These are most of our seniors who graduated last year,” Rao said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “They don’t have the ability to continue spending time coming back to Princeton in order to attend these kinds of long, protracted hearings.”
McCarthy requested that as many people as possible attend in-person, although he appeared open to virtual options for graduates living out of state.
“Even for students who live locally, taking three week days off to participate in a trial is fairly onerous,” Neis said.
Another pre-trial conference has been scheduled for Feb. 18.
Cynthia Torres is an assistant News editor for the ‘Prince.’
Christopher Bao contributed reporting.
Please send corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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