A 25-year-old Black Lives Matter protester and former soldier was acquitted this week of all counts stemming from his July arrest outside Colorado Springs City Hall.
An El Paso County Court jury on Wednesday deliberated less than 30 minutes before finding Demarick Webb-Rivera not guilty of two misdemeanor counts of obstructing the road during a BLM protest over the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
The verdict capped a daylong trial before Judge Samuel Evig. If convicted, the defendant could have spent six months in jail, and it would have jeopardized a security clearance he needs to find work in the private sector, his attorneys say.
“I feel like it was just unjust,” Webb-Rivera told The Gazette of his arrest and prosecution. “It was a violation of our constitution.”
The former Fort Carson soldier, who is Black, lived in Colorado Springs at the time, and said he attended the protest to advocate for improving conditions for Blacks, and that he remained peaceful throughout. He has since moved to Nashville, Tenn.
Howard Black, a spokesman for the District Attorney’s Office, declined to address questions about the office’s handling of BLM protest arrests because some cases are still pending.
“We evaluate each case based on the facts and merits presented in the evidence,” Black said in a written response.
Webb-Rivera is among dozens of people who were arrested in the fallout from Floyd’s death, which ignited a national reckoning on matters of race and led to protests in cities across the U.S. calling for fairer treatment of Blacks and minorities living here.
In December, a prosecutor said in court that the District Attorney’s Office had a policy barring plea offers to protestors accused of blocking roads. Prosecutors held to that stance in Webb-Rivera’s case, said attorney Jeremy Loew, whose firm represented him.
Loew said the policy treats protesters more harshly than people accused in homicides, child sexual assaults and drunken driving crashes.
“We repeatedly begged the District Attorney’s Office to negotiate this case with us and repeatedly we were told absolutely not,” he said.
Black said his office agreed to a plea deal earlier this month with one of three people arrested after an Aug. 3 demonstration in the Pulpit Rock neighborhood, but didn’t elaborate beyond providing a copy of the plea agreement. The protest was held outside the home of one of the Colorado Springs police officers who fatally shot De’Von Bailey as he ran from an arrest in 2019. Sherrie Smith pleaded guilty to possession of a dangerous weapon and disobeying a public safety order/rioting and was sentenced June 8 to two years probation, court records show.
The officers involved in the Bailey shooting said they believed he was reaching for a gun and were later cleared of wrongdoing by the District Attorney’s Office. Trials are pending for two fellow protesters. Charles Johnson is due to face a jury Sept. 27, and Lloyd Porche has a trial scheduled for Oct. 25, court records show.
Webb-Rivera once expressed a willingness to plead guilty to his charges to avoid the expense of flying to Colorado for court. At that point, attorneys Loew and Matt Roche said they waived their fee and agreed to represent him for free.
A conviction could have meant up to six months in jail, but for Webb-Rivera, it also would have cost him a security clearance required to work in information technology, the field for which he trained during prior Army service.
“They didn’t even ask,” said Roche, a former prosecutor. “They didn’t ask one thing about Mr. Webb-Rivera — who he is as a person, anything.”
Loew also said that the prosecution during jury selection used one of its three peremptory challenges to dismiss a Black juror from the panel. The resulting jury had one Black member instead of two as a result, he said.
“Basically, they were trying to not even give me a jury of my peers,” Webb-Rivera said.
The acquittal comes a month after a different BLM protester, Molly Avion, 21, saw a similar charge against her dismissed after a judge ruled it violated her free-speech rights. Avion had been among 18 people ticketed weeks after a group of protesters blocked northbound lanes on Interstate 25 near the Bijou exit for roughly 30 minutes on June 30.
Legal observers told the newspaper that the judge’s ruling wasn’t binding on other judges, but that it would likely be carefully reviewed as part of similar cases. The District Attorney’s Office has said it plans to appeal but an update wasn’t available.
Webb-Rivera said he was on the street outside City Hall at roughly 7 p.m. when police issued a dispersal order.
His attorneys say he approached officers trying to find out where the group should move, and where they could legally remain, when he was arrested.
“It’s at the point that he actually complies that they decide to arrest him,” Roche said. There were no allegations of violence or threats, and police had already shut down the intersection, so no drivers were in the intersection at the time, Webb-Rivera’s attorneys said.
Webb-Rivera was arrested, taken to the Police Operations Center on South Nevada Avenue and the booked into the El Paso County jail until he could post bail, which Loew called excessive, given the allegations.
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