{"id":2137,"date":"2011-04-22T23:46:10","date_gmt":"2011-04-23T03:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/2005-arrests-in-valdosta-city-council-meeting-unconstitutional-georgia-supreme-court.html"},"modified":"2011-04-22T23:46:10","modified_gmt":"2011-04-23T03:46:10","slug":"2005-arrests-in-valdosta-city-council-meeting-unconstitutional-georgia-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/2005-arrests-in-valdosta-city-council-meeting-unconstitutional-georgia-supreme-court.html","title":{"rendered":"2005 arrests in Valdosta City Council meeting unconstitutional —Georgia Supreme Court"},"content":{"rendered":"Some of\n\nthe events the person posting as John J. Fretti described<\/a>\nare elaborated on in this newspaper report. -jsq\n

\nKelli Hernandez wrote 1 May 2006 in the VDT,\n\nCourt rules arrests unconstitutional:\nCase involves 15 citizens arrested and charged with disrupting a lawful meeting<\/a>\n

\nThe case originally surfaced after 15 Valdosta citizens were arrested\nand charged with violating statute 16-11-34 (a), which provides “a\nperson who recklessly or knowingly commits any act which may reasonably be\nexpected to prevent or disrupt a lawful meeting, gathering or procession\nis guilty of a misdemeanor.” Charges came after the group allegedly\ndisrupted a Valdosta city council meeting in May 2005. Calle Fielden\nand Leigh Touchton, two of those arrested, appealed to the courts on\nthe grounds that the statute under which the citizens were charged was\nunconstitutionally vague and broad.\n

\nOn April 21, 2005, Rev. Floyd Rose addressed the council\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

\nduring the\ncitizen’s to be heard portion of the meeting regarding a push toward\nthe renaming of Barber Park. Rose refused to step down from the podium\nafter Valdosta Mayor John J. Fretti made the request. Rose, along with\nPeople\u2019s Tribunal vice president Willie M. Head were arrested under\nthe disruption of public meeting law.\n

\nAfter the council voted 3-2 in favor of keeping the original name of\nthe park intact, Rose and Head returned to the council one month later\nalong with other citizens who wished to make their desires heard.\n

\nRose commented that Barber Park was named after Ian Barber who established\nthe park as a private park open to white citizens only.\n

\n\n<\/a>\nRose noted that the 15 citizens were not there protesting, but simply\nwanted to make a request to the council to establish a committee who\nwould look at the proposal and make a recommendation to the council. The\ncitizens wanted to see Barber Park renamed in honor of Ossie Davis, a\nSouth Georgia native, playwright and actor who passed away in February\n2005. The group of citizens believed the request was well-founded because\nthe park rests in a neighborhood in which 95 percent of the residents are\nAfrican American. When council asked Rose to step down from the podium,\nthe 14 other citizens in attendance stood up behind him.\n

\nValdosta Police Commander Johnnie Fason entered the council chambers and\nrequested that all those who wanted to be arrested follow him. Of the\n20 who left the council chambers with the police, 15 were arrested and\nplaced in vans for transport to the jail. They spent the night in the\nLowndes County Jail until bond hearings could be held on Friday. Rose\nwas placed in solitary confinement for 24 hours, and all 15 citizens\nwere released on bond.\n

\nWhen asked what the ruling meant for the future of Valdosta and Lowndes\nCounty during an interview with a Valdosta Daily Times reporter, Rose\nsaid, “It’s going to say to the City of Valdosta that citizens have\nthe right for redress of grievances before this government and that\nright cannot be abridged by laws that subvert the first amendment of\nthe U.S. Constitution.”\n<\/blockquote>\nThere’s more in\n\nthe VDT article.<\/a>\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some of the events the person posting as John J. Fretti described are elaborated on in this newspaper report. -jsq Kelli Hernandez wrote 1 May 2006 in the VDT, Court rules arrests unconstitutional: Case involves 15 citizens arrested and charged with disrupting a lawful meeting The case originally surfaced after 15 Valdosta citizens were arrested […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,48,2,19,72,20,3,54,4099,4074,133],"tags":[8736,4676,4679,2825,8701,8730,727,3839,4678,4020,7,2495,2998,1270,6,4677],"class_list":["post-2137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-code-enforcement","category-government","category-history","category-incarceration","category-law","category-transparency","category-valdosta-city-council","category-vcc-5-may-2005","category-vcc-21-april-2005","category-vdt","tag-activism","tag-calle-fielden","tag-civil-disobedience","tag-floyd-rose","tag-georgia","tag-incarceration","tag-jail","tag-john-j-fretti","tag-johnnie-fason","tag-leigh-touchton","tag-lowndes-county","tag-mayor","tag-ossie-davis","tag-police","tag-valdosta","tag-willie-m-head"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-yt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}