The city of Atlanta will ask an Atlanta Municipal Court judge to throw out subpoenas served on Mayor Kasim Reed, Atlanta Police Chief George Turner and four other city and police officials by lawyers for Occupy Atlanta protesters slated to stand trial next week.

Lawyers for more than 80 protesters who were arrested last year after Reed rescinded an executive order allowing them to remain in Woodruff Park the park after 11 p.m. want to question the officials regarding the basis for the evictions, according to a release sent out Friday by the office of Davis Boazman partner Mawuli Davis.

A staffer in the law office said the others named in the subpoena were Reed’s director of communications, Sonji Jacobs; Deputy Police Chief Renee Propes; and APD spokespersons Carlos Campos and Alice Johnson.

Deputy City Attorney Eric Richardson said he and City Solicitor Raines Carter have asked Municipal Court Senior Judge Crystal Gaines to quash the subpoenas.

Richardson noted that Gaines has already tossed out a subpoena the Occupy lawyers filed earlier seeking documents from Reed relating to the removal of the protesters by police on the night of Oct. 25, 2011.

“Before, they were chiefly interested in documents from the Atlanta Police Department, and we provided a good bit in response,” said Richardson. “But one of the things they wanted were documents that reflected on the mayors thinking in issuing and revoking the executive order.  We maintained early on that that wasn’t relevant to these proceedings, so we moved
to quash the subpoena for those documents.”

On Wednesday, Gaines issued an order granting the motion to quash, and “almost immediately we got a subpoena for [Reed’s] testimony,” Richardson said.

In the wake of the October arrests and a smaller number of arrests the following month, more than two dozen volunteer lawyers signed on to represent the protesters, and more than  a dozen have spent the last year filing motions and making appearances prior to next week’s trial, according to Davis’ release.

The protesters are charged with misdemeanor code violations carrying a maximum sentence of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Contributor: Greg Land in City of Atlanta, Criminal Cases | subscribe to rss |   share