A prosecutor urged jurors Wednesday to convict an Iowa journalist of interfering with police during a racial injustice protest last year, saying the fact that she was covering the demonstration shouldn't factor into whether they find her guilty in a case that many view as an attack on the freedom of the press.
Prosecutor Bradley Kinkade urged jurors during his closing argument not to consider that Des Moines Register reporter Andrea Sahouri was a journalist who was covering the protest for racial justice outside a mall last May.
He said her profession is not a defense against the charges she faces: failure to disperse and interference with official acts. In fact, he argued that the video and photos she reported live on Twitter of protesters breaking store windows and throwing rocks was “convincing evidence” that she was near an unlawful assembly.
After closing arguments wrapped up, the jury began deliberating on whether Sahouri, 25, and her former boyfriend Spenser Robnett, 24, were guilty of the two misdemeanors. If convicted, each faces fines and up to 30 days in jail on each charge.
The trial was the first of a U.S. journalist charged with a crime while working since 2018, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. The case has drawn heavy criticism from advocates for journalism and human rights who say the charges should have never been brought.
Kinkade said jurors must answer only whether Sahouri and Robnett were within hearing distance when police gave orders to disperse but nonetheless stayed with the crowd. He argued that it didn’t matter whether they actually heard or understood the orders, which were given nearly 90 minutes before they were pepper sprayed and arrested as police tried to unblock an intersection. The orders were barely audible on police video played during the trial.
Kinkade also urged jurors to accept the testimony of arresting officer Luke Wilson who claimed that Robnett tried to pull Sahouri out of his custody and that Sahouri briefly resisted arrest. Wilson adknowledged that he failed to record the arrest on his body camera and did not try to recover the video later.
Defense attorney Nicholas Klinefeldt said the case was about a reporter who was doing her job and a boyfriend who accompanied her for safety reasons. He said Sahouri was reporting on the “destruction of property so that the community could see what was going on.”
Klinefeldt said the defendants didn't hear any dispersal orders, and that Sahouri was trying to report only from places where she was allowed. He noted that they were running away from a tense location where riot police had deployed tear gas when Wilson arrested them.
Klinefeldt said that the officer’s claim that they interfered wasn’t credible. Sahouri testified that she put her hands up and repeatedly identified herself as a reporter but was nonetheless pepper sprayed and handcuffed with zip ties. Robnett said he stepped forward to tell the officer she was a journalist and Wilson pepper sprayed him, knocking him to the ground.
