“I have no choice but to plead not guilty.”
Those were the words of Nekima Levy-Armstrong when she was arraigned in federal court Friday afternoon on charges stemming from a Jan. 18 protest inside Cities Church in St. Paul. Fellow defendant, William Kelly, was even more pointed in his response to the charges.
“I am not guilty,” Kelly told the judge.
Levy-Armstrong and Kelly, along with former CNN anchor and independent journalist Don Lemon, St. Paul Public Schools board member Chauntyll Allen and college student Jerome Richardson appeared before a judge at the U.S. Courthouse in downtown St. Paul for their hearings. Protesters went to the church to express their concerns about Pastor David Easterwood’s leadership of the church while maintaining his leadership of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in St. Paul.
Nine people in total were arrested weeks after the protest. Two of the nine – Lemon and Georgia Fort – were covering the protest in their capacity as journalists. Their arrests ignited a national uproar due to journalists' protections and freedom of speech rights under the First Amendment for the protesters. Richardson, a 21-year-old Temple University student, was neither a journalist nor protester, but was assisting Lemon as his Twin Cities liaison.