LONG BEACH MAY DAY COURT CASE UPDATES

FELONY CASES:

Robert (Ruckus) Middaugn and Alex Schwartz are both still facing felony charges, and are scheduled to make their last pre-trial appearance on October 30th in the Long Beach Municipal Court House. Alex has been offered a plea bargain that he is considering taking; this ‘deal’ is to plead guilty to felony assault, and receive probation. At the end of his probationary period, if he has not had any violations, his felony charge will be erased from his record. The scenario for Robert, who has been in jail since May 1st, does not look so good.


Robert is charged with Felony assault against an officer, Felony conspiracy to Riot, Felony resisting arrest, and misdemeanor riot. Robert is also facing a probation violation for a probation that he received after pleading no contest to charges stemming from the Democratic National convention last August. Robert has been offered a plea bargain of three years prison time. Robert’s lawyer has told us that Rob will not be taking this plea bargain. Rob will be facing major time if he is convicted of these charges, although no one has suggested how much time Robert may be facing, one can only guess after what has happened to Rob Thaxton, and Jeffrey (Free) Leurs.

MISDEMEANOR CASES:

One of the last batches of those arrested for misdemeanor charges had their last pre-trial hearing on October 23rd. The majority of those arrested had already pleaded out. Of the group that went to court on the 23rd nine people chose to reject the plea-bargain and had their trial date set for November 15th. These nine people are facing 7 misdemeanor charges (when we appeared in court on the 23 we learned that we were facing a new count of wearing a mask for the purposes of evasion while in the commission of a public offense, which brought the total number of charges up to 7) the other six charges are: riot, conspiracy, failure to disperse, illegal assembly, rout, and remaining at the scene of a riot.


The Judge and the prosecution have been pressing very hard for the arrestees to take plea bargains (one year probation, and a 5 fine), and were visibly disturbed to learn that 9 people were refusing the plea ‘deal’ and going to trial. The judge and prosecution have made statements to some of the lawyers that they believed that the defendants will not receive a fair trial after the September 11th attacks, and also stated that they would hand down heavy sentences for any possible convictions.


Last week, the only Juvenal who did not have her charges dropped finished with her non-jury trial. She was charged with failure to disperse and riot. The Judge acquitted her of riot but found her guilty of failure to disperse. Her sentencing will occur next week, and it is expected that she will not receive any jail time.

For more information please contact the Long Beach May Day Support Group at

lbmaydayfund@disinfo.net

Please write letters of support to Robert (Ruckus)

Robert Middaugn

#6859467

PO Box 86164

Terminal Annex

Los Angeles CA, 90086-164