Pete Eyre and Adam Mueller, who were accused of illegally filming officials at the Franklin County Jail last summer, were acquitted of any wrongdoing on Tuesday by a Franklin County jury.
Protesters showed up at the Franklin County Courthouse this week to support Pete Eyre and Adam Mueller, who were on trial in Greenfield District Court for allegedly illegally filming officials at the Franklin County Jail last summer. The defendants were found not guilty by a jury on Tuesday, ending their year-long legal ordeal.This updates a story originally posted at 4:20 p.m. Tuesday, July 19.
GREENFIELD -- It took a Greenfield District Court jury about two hours on Tuesday to acquit a pair of New Hampshire men accused of illegally filming at the Franklin County Jail last summer.
"We can put this behind us and move on with our other projects," said defendant Pete Eyre, who along with Adam Mueller had been charged with unlawfully filming law enforcement officials at the Greenfield jail last July.
Eyre, 31, and Mueller, 28, both of Keene, are subscribers of voluntaryism, an anti-government movement that favors the concept of natural law or voluntary adherence to rules and regulations over a state-sanctioned system of laws.
The pair were arrested on July 1, 2010, after attempting to film the process of bailing out their friends, who were being held on charges at the jail.
Eyre and Mueller initially were granted permission to film the bail process, but later were forbidden by jail officials from recording the procedure. When they continued to digitally recording their encounter with jail officials, they were arrested by Greenfield police.
A jury of six people and two alternates listened to testimony in the two-day trial, which began Monday and ended with closing arguments Tuesday morning.
The prosecution claimed the defendants recorded law enforcement officials, then posted the nearly 28-minute video clip on the Internet without the officers' knowledge.
Northwestern Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Banks argued that because the officers were unaware their images were transmitted to a third party and uploaded to the Web, that process took place in secrecy -- a violation of a so-called wiretapping statute forbidding the secret recording or hearing of a conversation, or aiding in the transmission or hearing of that conversation.
Eyre and Mueller testified that they never attempted to hide the fact that they were recording at the jail. Not only did they ask permission to film the bail-out process -- which initially was granted -- but their recording devices were "out in the open," Eyre said.
Eyre said he was "flabbergasted" the prosecution had attempted to use the secrecy statute when there was no attempt by him and Mueller to be secretive.
The jury found the defendants not guilty of three criminal counts: Each was acquitted of unlawful wiretapping, while Mueller also was acquitted of a charge of resisting arrest.
Two other charges initially lodged against Eyre were dropped before the case even made it to trial -- a point Eyre was prohibited from making during the trial because of Banks' objections, which were sustained by Judge William F. Mazanec III.
In a courthouse lobby interview after the verdict came down, Eyre said he felt jurors would have realized just how flimsy the government's case was if he had been permitted to mention the dismissed charges.
"I did feel hamstrung," he said.
At the end of the trial, Eyre walked over to Banks, shook his hand and shared a few words with the prosecutor.
When asked by a reporter afterward what he had said to the attorney, Eyre said he told Banks he wished the government would have dismissed its case against him and Mueller. Eyre said he also told Banks he hoped the prosecutor would come to realize that he and Mueller were only standing up for themselves.
"I want him to go home and think about us as decent people," Eyre said.
Throughout the short trial, Eyre and Mueller received strong backing from a large contingent of friends and supporters. Some of those supporters -- including fellow voluntaryists, anarchists, libertarians and people opposed to taxes and the government -- publicly expressed their disapproval of the trial, the prosecutor, courthouse staff and law enforcement officials, in general.
One member of the entourage -- an older woman with long, gray hair, wearing a black top, paisley dress and sandals -- told a Massachusetts Trial Court officer stationed outside the courtroom that he was wearing the "costume of the state."
Many in the crowd also wore T-shirts supporting Cop Block, the "pro-police accountability" organization founded by Mueller and Eyre. The organization claims its mission is to increase police accountability by challenging police authority through the posting of photos and videos of officers on the Internet.
When Eyre and Mueller were told by jail officials they could not film on the premises last July, jail officials were unable to produce any written policies precluding filming at the facility, a public, taxpayer-funded building. There also were no posted signs specifically prohibiting the use of recording devices at the jail, which is why Eyre and Mueller insisted they were within their rights to continue filming.
Later, when police were called to the scene, Greenfield Police Sgt. Todd Dodge ordered the pair to either stop filming or leave the premises. Eyre and Mueller were handcuffed and arrested when they refused to stop digitally recording the episode.
"Both Adam and myself, we felt that, at the end of the day, we didn't do anything wrong, we didn't hurt anybody," Eyre said.
The jury apparently felt the same way.
As jurors silently filed out of the courtroom after delivering their verdict, they received a sustained round of applause from Eyre and Mueller's supporters.
The former defendants, now free to resume their activism, plan to take their Liberty On Tour mission to the streets, espousing their views on voluntaryism and police accountability.
As he was preparing to leave the courthouse after two, hot days of legal drama, Eyre paused on the staircase to sum up why he believes the jury voted the way it did.
"Liberty is a universal thing," he said.