A patient defense

Sacramento County prosecutors have quietly backed down from two of their more scrutinized civil disobedience cases in recent years—against three anti-Nazi agitators swept up in a 2016 brawl outside the state Capitol and a transgender activist who protested Stephon Clark’s death outside the District Attorney’s Office last year.

The separate concessions came as looming criminal trials would have forced the DA’s office to show all its cards.

That was an especially risky prospect on the July 2016 melee between white supremacists and anti-fascists outside the state Capitol. The notorious event left 10 injured and predated the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., the following summer, when a white supremacist plowed a car through a crowd of demonstrators, killing one. In both instances, cops on the ground were criticized for letting opposing forces engage each other. In Sacramento, that allowed a pro-Trump rally by the far-right Traditionalist Worker Party to quickly devolve into skirmishes between blade-wielding skinheads and their stick-swinging detractors.

After a yearlong investigation by the California Highway Patrol recommended the arrests of 105 people—including 100 anti-Nazi protesters—the DA’s office charged three anti-fascists and one white nationalist with felony assault and rioting.

In April, avowed white nationalist William Scott Planer pleaded no contest to felony assault, for clubbing a female protester, and was sentenced to four years in state prison, online court records show.

On Nov. 14, “the antifa three” of Yvonne “Yvette” Felarca, Porfirio Paz and Michael A. Williams pleaded no contest to single misdemeanor counts of unlawful assembly in exchange for agreeing to stay away from the Capitol and performing 90 hours of community service, which they’ll have to complete before participating in any more protests.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Grippi called the plea deal “a fair and just resolution under the circumstances of this case.”

Saying the DA’s office has “great respect for the First Amendment,” Grippi added in the statement, “However, when orchestrated acts of violence take place in our county, whether in the name of free speech or in an effort to prevent it, our obligation is to hold those individuals accountable.”

No one has been charged with the stabbings, meaning the CHP was unable to fully solve one of the biggest crowd control disasters to occur on its watch.

Regarding the separate case, Ebony Ava Harper said she learned around Halloween that she would no longer face misdemeanor charges of resisting arrest and unlawful assembly.

The 40-year-old trans rights activist joined a Stephon Clark rally outside the DA’s office in April 2018. Harper and other participants said the rally was winding down when city bicycle officers entered the crowd. Police say Harper resisted arrest; Harper says she fell and suddenly found herself tazed and handcuffed. Sacramento Superior Court’s website shows her case was dismissed Oct. 17 after a year-and-a-half of shadowboxing with the DA’s office.

“After further consideration of all of the facts and circumstances of the case, and recognizing the defendant spent a period of time in custody on arrest, we have determined further punitive action would not advance the interests of justice,” Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Dawn Bladet said in a statement.

Reached via social media, Harper, who left the California Endowment this year to launch the National Alliance for Trans Liberation and Advancement, wrote that she felt “relieved for the moment.”