SEATTLE — A federal jury has awarded four anti-police graffiti protesters $680,000, including punitive damages, after finding Seattle police officers violated their civil rights with “malice, oppression and reckless disregard” when officers booked them into jail during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lawyers for the protesters said a 10-member jury awarded the protesters punitive damages for the officers’ actions, finding they “acted with malice, oppression or reckless disregard” for their First Amendment right to free speech. The jury found for the plaintiffs on claims of unconstitutional retaliatory arrests and jail bookings based on the anti-police content of the graffiti. The verdict came Friday evening following a six-day trial before U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman.
In January 2021, Seattle officers arrested four anti-police protesters — Derek Tucson, Robin Snyder, Monsieree de Castro and Erik Moya-Delgado — for writing statements like “[Expletive] the Police” and “peaceful protests” in chalk and charcoal on walls and portable concrete barriers outside the department’s East Precinct on Capitol Hill.
According to court pleadings, the protesters were booked into the King County Jail for violating Seattle’s graffiti law despite a city and county ban on booking most misdemeanor offenders because of the COVID pandemic. The officers invoked a “protester exception” to the booking ban that had been discussed by police and high-ranking city officials, the court documents say.
The protesters claimed the very existence of that exception showed the intent by the city to violate First Amendment free-speech and peaceful assembly protections, according to the lawsuit and court pleadings. The four spent the night in jail but were never prosecuted.
The officers involved were identified in court pleadings as Alexander Patton, Dylan Nelson, Ryan Kannard and Michele Letizia.
At trial, it was shown that nobody in the Police Department would take responsibility for the decision to use the exception and book the protesters.
“The fact that … none of these officers can identify whether a call was placed to King County Jail regarding an exception to the booking restrictions, or who made that call … is shocking and reveals the oppressive nature of defendant’s behavior,” Braden Pence, the Seattle attorney who tried the case on behalf of the protesters wrote in a brief.
He called the verdict a “big win for free speech.”
Each of the four protesters was awarded $20,000 in compensatory damages from the city, with the remainder coming in the form of punitive damages levied in various amounts — all exceeding $60,000 — to be paid by the officers individually.
The protesters sued in January 2023, arguing the graffiti law was overly broad under the First Amendment and could, in the wrong hands, mean that children drawing on the sidewalk during a parade could theoretically be arrested. They also argued the law was overly vague under the 14th Amendment guarantees of equal protection under the law.
Judge Pechman agreed, initially tossing the entire part of the law regulating property damage, including graffiti. She later clarified her injunction to only apply to the graffiti section.
Pechman wrote at the time that the city’s statute could be used for censorship, noting that “there is allegedly a policy not to arrest children drawing rainbows on the sidewalk,” but the statute would allow for that or the arrest of “those who might scribe something that irks an individual officer.”
The city attorney’s office appealed that ruling to the 9th Circuit Court last year, calling the lower court’s hypothetical scenarios “far-fetched,” and the appeals court reinstated the law.
The office did not return an email seeking comment on the verdict Monday.
After the verdict, the protesters’ lawyers said they are asking Pechman to reinstate the injunction.
The jury in the protesters’ case heard evidence that the officers targeted the plaintiffs and that at least one of them was known to the officers from earlier protests. Evidence at the trial included photos of police standing by when other officers and citizens wrote pro-police slogans on public sidewalks.
“Based on the evidence presented at trial, the jury found the defendants arrested and booked the plaintiffs because of the content or viewpoint of their speech,” attorney Pence said in a prepared statement.
The incident occurred in the wake of large Black Lives Matter rallies and protests after the May 2020 video-captured murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, which included the three-week takeover of portions of Capitol Hill by BLM protesters and the decision by police officials to abandon the East Precinct during the height of the unrest.
Police returned to the precinct in late summer 2021.
In addition to revealing the questionable actions by the officers who arrested the four protesters, the investigation by the plaintiffs’ attorneys sparked additional controversy when their body-camera footage revealed that officers had hung a Trump flag and kept a mock tombstone of a 19-year-old man killed by police in 2017 in a precinct breakroom.
“City officials also made public statements encouraging peaceful protests encouraging peaceful protests while privately sanctioning unlawful jailing of the same protesters by its own police force,” Pence said. When arrested, police noted the plaintiffs have written statements like “[Expletive] the Police” and “peaceful protests” in chalk and charcoal on the walls and a movable concrete on the sidewalk outside the precinct.
In a photograph taken Friday on the steps of the federal courthouse, one of the plaintiffs, Tucson, is wearing a T-shirt with the same anti-police profanity. Another of the plaintiffs, Adrian Moya-Delgado, is wearing a shirt with the message, “Defund the SPD.”
