LONG BEACH MAY DAY COURT CASE UPDATES FELONY CASES:
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Robert (Ruckus) Middaugh 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.\tAt 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.
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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) Leers.
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MISDEMEANOR CASES:
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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.\tThese 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.
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The Judge and the prosecution have been pressing very hard for the
arrestees to take plea bargains (one year probation, and a $135 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.
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Last week, the only juvenile 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.
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For more information please contact the Long Beach May Day Support Group at
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