Louisiana prosecutors have dropped charges against protesters including civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson and Ieshia Evans, the nurse whose arrest photo went viral.
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According to the Baltimore Sun, District Attorney Hillar C. Moore III of East Baton Rouge announced Friday that his office wouldn’t pursue charges against some 100 protesters arrested for obstruction of a roadway or public passage.
“These particular cases only involve facts where the person arrested failed to comply with an officer’s direction to leave the roadway or public passage,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement, the New York Daily News reports. “While all citizens have the right to assemble and protest, they do not have the right to block streets and impede the flow of traffic.”
Mckesson, Evans and others were arrested July 9 following a protest over the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling.
“This is exactly the remedy we had requested, and it’s fair because Mckesson did not do anything wrong,” Mckesson’s attorney, Roy Rodney Jr., told the Daily News. “He did not break the law; he was unfairly arrested.”
The Daily News notes that four protesters remain in prison but doesn’t note what those protesters have been charged with.
Evans was arrested July 11 during a protest in Baton Rouge. A photo of her arrest, showing her in a sundress and sensible shoes and with officers dressed in full riot gear swarming in to arrest her, went viral.
Read more at the Baltimore Sun and the New York Daily News.
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