Thanks to Duke Law’s First Amendment Clinic and local attorneys, our journalists are appealing their convictions for doing their jobs while covering a 2021 police crackdown
Above: Asheville police begin their sweep of the homeless camp and protest at Aston Park on Dec. 25, 2021. Photo by Veronica Coit, who was arrested immediately after taking it
This past Friday, March 22, Duke Law’s First Amendment Clinic, along with local attorneys Ben Scales and Alan Graf, filed a brief appealing the conviction of two Blade journalists on trespassing charges for covering a 2021 police crackdown on a protest and homeless camp.
The brief, filed to the North Carolina Court of Appeals, seeks to overturn the conviction of reporters Matilda Bliss and Veronica Coit on second degree trespassing charges.
“On Christmas night 2021, these journalists went to a public park and covered the clearing of a protest on a matter of intense debate By the end of the night, their hands, once holding up cameras, were placed in cuffs. In the wake of their arrests, more than forty-five media and legal organizations called for the City to drop all charges because ‘[p]rosecuting the journalists is not only bad policy but violates the First Amendment.’”
The brief notes that such charges against journalists are usually dropped, but not in Asheville.
“But the City pressed on, resulting in convictions that are not just legally erroneous, but fundamentally at odds with First Amendment doctrine.”
Specifically the brief asserts that Judge Tommy Davis erred in June 2023 when he concluded that the First Amendment did not protect the journalists’ recording of police actions in a public park and that his instructions to the jury had multiples issues, especially misleading them to believe they couldn’t consider their status as reporters or First Amendment issues.
Instead, the brief declares that our journalists had a legal right – backed by abundant case law — to access the park to cover the police’s actions.
“City parks are traditional public fora, historically open to the public and the press. Furthermore, journalists play a vital role in police accountability. Therefore, the State must show that the park curfew, as applied to Defendants, was justified by a compelling government interest and was narrowly tailored,” the brief reads. “Their First Amendment activity, which consisted of standing aside, observing, and filming police activity, touched none of the concerns that underlie the curfew. Thus, closing off the forum to Bliss and Coit was not ‘essential’ to furthering the City’s interest.”
The brief also pushes back on the assistant district attorneys’ assertions during the jury trial that because the reporters — Bliss in particular — were at Aston Park and had publicly expressed sympathy with the opposition to camp sweeps, they must have been part of the protest.
“Bliss’s personal views are irrelevant to her journalistic right of access and her presence in the park,” the brief states. “When journalists cover protests, they must be in the same place as the protesters to gather the news. Interviewing and observing protesters are good journalistic practices, not evidence of participation.”
There were also problems with Davis’ ruling that journalists, incredibly, didn’t need to physically be present to cover the police raid on the encampment.
“Police ordered Defendants to leave the park entirely, incorrectly suggesting that they could still report from a sidewalk that was down a hill and at least 150 feet away. Given that it was dark, it almost certainly would have been impossible to see, hear, or record the sweep from that vantage point,” the brief states. “The claim that obtaining ex post facto interviews and public records are sufficient alternatives to watching events as they unfold ignores both the importance of real-time reporting and the watchdog role of the press.”
Another major legal problem with the conviction Davis’ instructions to the jury, where he declared they couldn’t consider First Amendment concerns and issued confusing wording about whether they could consider the fact Bliss and Coit were there as reporters.
Among other issues this caused jurors to “incorrectly believe that they could not consider either the First Amendment or Defendants’ status as journalists in their deliberations” and infringing on “the jury’s traditional role to safeguard against government encroachment on speech and press freedoms.”
In short “the convictions of Bliss and Coit are a dangerous step toward the evisceration of freedom of the press in North Carolina” and must be overturned or given a new trial.
Our co-op couldn’t agree more, of course. We are thankful to the lawyers and students at the First Amendment Clinic, the attorneys here in Asheville, the press freedom organizations around the world and the many locals who’ve supported our journalists and our co-op in facing this.
Since the moment the police put our reporters in handcuffs we’ve remained determined to fight this injustice to the last. That will not change, and we know we are not alone.
In solidarity,
The Asheville Blade Co-op
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