molly conger

finally back in session. the DA says officer kenyon’s body cam & the surveillance footage captured them at the monument. he says the handwriting matches known samples (this wasn’t established in evidence?) & ryan’s hands can be seen at his crotch.

the judge notes that he saw the camera flashes, indicating they were taking pictures of what they were doing.

oh yikes, the DA says the graffiti included the n word (which he spells out rather than saying)

the judge doesn’t think that urinating on a statue defaces it in any way. he says public urination requires that someone of the opposite sex be exposed to the crime & nancy doesn’t count because she’s a “willing participant.”

of the specific antiracist activists threatened in the graffiti message, the judge asks the DA if he doesn’t think anyone else in “their movement” (referring to the neoconfederates) hates them.

the judge wanted to look at an exhibit again but it appears the witness accidentally took some of the exhibits with him when he left. what the hell kind of amateur hour shit is going on here.

a close up picture of the unsung founders memorial is on the screen. the message “TEAR THIS DOWN” is visible in what looks like red marker.

the defense says there’s a “huge lapse in time” between the two incidents of vandalism. the judge says there’s a gap between when they were discovered, we don’t know when they occurred.

the judge asks if it’s a crime to urinate on the monument. the defense attorney says he doesn’t think it is.

the judge says that possession of a stolen item is pretty good evidence that they stole it. the defense attorney refuses to concede that the flag his client was photographed holding is the identical and one of a kind flag that was stolen two hours prior.

nancy’s lawyer is giving his own closing, calling the state’s closing “a lot of smoke and not a whole lot of fire.” “we live in a society where you can believe whatever you wanna believe!”

he says what his client is alleged to have done doesn’t constitute ethnic intimidation (she defaced a monument with the N word)

he says the statute specifically requires that the property of another person be destroyed because of the color of that individual person’s skin.

the language of the statute is “damage, deface, injure, AND destroy.” oh how i wish legislators were more careful with conjunctions and punctuation! cases have been decided on the basis of semicolons in the statute.

the attorney argues that the university of north carolina is the owner of the property & they are not an entity that can be ethnically intimidated. further, he claims that nothing that happened to the monument constitutes defacement.

aha, we finally get the text of the rest of the graffiti. the other activist named was maya little. they scrawled in marker that she is a domestic terrorist. they also wrote “destroy this monument to racism” (on a monument to black workers)

these photo shows “f*ggots” and “n*ger” (yes, only one g) written on the monument in marker.

lol the defense says they may have been holding the flag but they had no idea what it meant or where it came from. sure i always hold 8’ banners for absolutely no reason without understanding what i’m displaying.

further, he argues that if it had been two drunk frat boys who did the same thing, we wouldn’t be here. they’re just being targeted for their political beliefs! (beliefs which prompt them to commit acts of ethnic intimidation)

aha, wait a second. this wasn’t clear when they were being presented, but i wonder if these close up images of the monument that appear to have been taken in the dark with a flash are the ones we can see being taken by the defendant in the video.

what kind of cursed evidentiary hearing would result in the DA being able to show the defendant’s own photos of his crime during closing but disallow anyone from talking about where those photos came from?!

the judge needs some time to deliberate and has stepped out.

the timeline presented was weird and scrambled. the photos may have been the first responding cop’s photos. why didn’t he detain them when he talked to them? this is all so unclear.

in addition to the racist and homophobic slurs, they also wrote: “yankee go home,” “fuck antifa,” “fuck this monument,” and “confederate lives matter” on the monument to enslaved & freed black workers.

it seems that officer kenyon happened upon the pair just as they were finishing writing & pissing on the monument. according to his body cam footage, he chatted with them about the weather and let them go on their way. he didn’t notice the graffiti until after they’d left.

the judge is back!

judge: “i guess i’m still a little confused” about the difference between several similar statutes about defacement (wantonly damage injure or destroy/write and scribble on/damage deface or destroy). he asks what the difference is between the 3 statutes.

seems like figuring out what the charges are should’ve come at a stage slightly earlier than the verdict.

ok one of the defacement related statutes was a sub-section of the ethnic intimidation charge.