At the scene of the April 22 Yale encampment arrests. More than two dozen pro-Palestine Yale arrestees pleaded guilty to infractions and agreed to pay $90 fines in order to have criminal trespassing cases dropped — as 13 more decided instead to keep fighting for those “illegitimate” charges to be dismissed.
That was the outcome of 40 rapid-fire hearings Thursday morning in the ground-floor Courtroom A at the state courthouse at 121 Elm St.
Twenty-seven Yale students, many with keffiyehs wrapped around their necks, took turns walking to the defense table before state Superior Court Judge Frank Iannotti to agree to plea deals that brought to an end their respective criminal court cases that date back to April.
That was when Yale police arrested a total of 48 people who participated in a three-day tent encampment in Beinecke Plaza to protest Israel’s war in Gaza and to pressure Yale to divest from weapons manufacturers. It was one example of many across the country last spring of college students getting arrested for pro-Palestine protests on campus. Each Yale arrestee was charged with one misdemeanor count of first-degree criminal trespassing.
In the intervening months, roughly half a dozen arrested Yalies agreed to plea deals whereby state prosecutors nolled their criminal charges, the students pleaded guilty instead to simple trespassing infractions, and the students then paid $90 fines to resolve their cases entirely.
On Thursday, 27 more took those deals.
Student after student walked from the audience area of the courtroom to stand alongside their defense attorney, either Greta LaFleur or Abigail Mason, to tell Judge Iannotti that they were taking those plea deals. Again and again, Iannotti said the same words in response: That the criminal charges were nolled, and then dismissed. That the defendant had pleaded guilty to the simple trespassing infraction.
“Bond forfeiture on the infraction. Satisfy today?” he’d ask. Most students said yes, meaning they’d pay $90 on Thursday. Some agreed to pay $90 within the next two weeks.
“Second floor clerk’s office,” Iannotti concluded, telling the defendants where they needed to pay those fines. “Best of luck.” (One of the Yale arrestees who pleaded out on Thursday agreed to do 40 hours of community service by February in exchange for his case to be dropped, instead of taking the $90 fine.)
Thirteen of the Yale encampment arrestees didn’t take the plea deals on Thursday. Instead, in equally brief individual hearings before Iannotti, they had their cases continued to Dec. 4.
That’s when they and their attorneys will continue to fight for the underlying criminal trespassing charges to be dismissed. In late August, LaFleur and Mason filed a motion to dismiss. They are seeking to have the judge throw out the charges on the grounds that, among other legal arguments, the defendants weren’t all properly notified before Yale police started making arrests. On Oct. 16, Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney David Strollo filed an objection to that motion to dismiss, arguing that the charges should stand and that the arrestees were in fact properly notified.
After Thursday morning’s hearings, LaFleur said that the remaining defendants still have not received Yale police body-worn camera footage from the April 22 arrests — despite her side having requested that video multiple times. “We’re entitled to that,” she said, and cannot fully argue the motion to dismiss until that “discovery” is provided.
“This is a classic case of overcharging,” LaFleur said about the remaining criminal cases. These 13 remaining defendants are “unwilling to plead guilty,” even to infractions, in order to have the cases dropped.
One of those defendants who did not plead out on Thursday is Yale grad and local artist Jisu Sheen.
“The charge itself is not legitimate,” she said about the criminal trespassing charge she’s continuing to fight. She and her fellow defendants were engaging in “a protest against genocide, for human rights,” she continued.
“Yale has chosen to not learn from their mistakes,” Sheen said, referring not just to April’s arrests — but also to student arrests in the mid-1980s while pressuring Yale to divest from apartheid South Africa.“They’re not going to learn until we make them learn that it’s ridiculous to criminalize nonviolent protesters for human rights.”
She concluded that she’s not going to plead guilty — even if just to an infraction — so as not to set a harmful precedent for arresting student protesters. “I’m not going to accept a plea deal,” she said.
For previous articles about these protests and arrests at Yale, a university spokesperson has emphasized Yale’s support for free speech and peaceable assembly, and has said that university police made arrests only when protesters did not follow police orders to disperse.
Pro-Palestine protesters join homelessness activists on the courthouse steps Thursday.