When Jeffrey Berger stood beside hundreds of other protesters and blocked traffic for hours on Interstate 94 following the 2016 police shooting of Philando Castile, he says he knew he was putting himself at risk for arrest or even injury.
But he doesn’t believe his actions to be criminal, he told jury members hearing his case in Ramsey County District Court this week.
“I believe it is necessary for white-skin people to take risks with their own bodies to help heal the effects of white supremacy,” Berger said.
His intent when he walked onto the freeway was to help bring about social change, he told jurors, not to break the law.
But Assistant St. Paul City Attorney Stephen Christie argued during his opening remarks that Berger’s motives were irrelevant. What mattered, Christie said, was that Berger knew his actions would cause a nuisance and disrupt drivers but he walked onto the interstate anyway.
Christie pointed out that police gave warnings for protesters to disperse before making arrests in a demonstration that eventually turned violent.
The jury decided both sides had merit. Members returned a split verdict Wednesday after about three hours of deliberation.
They found the 76-year-old retired software engineer guilty of being a public nuisance that evening, but not guilty of the charge of unlawful assembly.
BERGER UNIQUE IN TAKING CASE TO TRIAL
Berger was the only one of the roughly 50 people charged following the hours-long protest on the freeway who took his case to trial.
All of the rest wound up pleading guilty to charges for various reasons after a decision made by the group that each should do what was in his or her best interest.
Berger said he felt compelled to take this case forward.
“I am in the position of being able to accept more risk,” said Berger, who is a father and grandfather. “I don’t have family members who are any longer depending on me so I need to somehow use this white privilege I have to carry things to their logical conclusion.”
He called the split-verdict in his case a victory — he had expected to be found guilty on both counts.
“The evidence was all there for the state to convict me just in terms of the narrow view of the events,” Berger said. “So (the jury) clearly heard my arguments … that we live in a white supremacist society and that people need to approach decisions with that in mind.”
Christie declined to comment after the verdict.
St. Paul City Attorney Sam Clark issued the following statement on the case:
“Our most important duty as prosecutors is to seek justice, which is what we’ve consistently done with every case from that night. We’ve now secured a guilty plea or verdict in all of them. This was a chaotic scene where more than 20 law enforcement officers were injured after police gave everyone multiple chances to leave the freeway without being arrested.”
Clark added:
“On a personal note, I understand the grief and anger that people feel whenever a police officer kills an unarmed civilian. As a person of color who grew up in the same neighborhood and was the same age as Philando, I personally felt those same feelings and more after his death. But while I can’t tell others how to process their grief and anger, as the city attorney I can’t let people get hurt.”
FATAL SHOOTING DURING TRAFFIC STOP LEADS TO PROTESTS
Protesters gathered on I-94 in the days after Castile was fatally shot.
The 32-year-old black man was shot by former St. Anthony Police Officer Jeronimo Yanez during a routine traffic stop July 6, 2016, in Falcon Heights.
His girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and Reynold’s then 4-year-old child, were in the car when Yanez pulled them over for a broken taillight.
Yanez shot Castile during their brief interaction after Castile told him he was carrying a gun.
Castile was licensed to carry it, but hadn’t disclosed that information before Yanez fired.
This summer Yanez was acquitted of manslaughter charges filed in connection with the shooting.
The fatal shooting sparked protests across the Twin Cities centered on excessive use of force by police, particularly against people of color.
Some protesters began hurling objects at police during the otherwise peaceful protest on I-94, causing injuries to responding officers. St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman described it as a riot.
About 120 others were charged in the protests. About half have entered guilty pleas. The rest of the cases are pending.
A FATHER AND GRANDFATHER WITH A HISTORY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE ARRESTS
During his two-day trial, Berger, who represented himself, shared his background with jurors.
The father of two and grandfather of four served in the Army in the early 1960s before being honorably discharged. Two of his grandchildren are children of color, he said.
The practitioner of Zen Buddhism said he started to get interested in activism during the Vietnam War. His focus shifted to issues of racial injustice following the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin.
He’s been arrested at demonstrations previously, including once during a Standing Rock oil pipeline protest in North Dakota and another time for disrupting the light rail in Minneapolis following Jamar Clark’s fatal shooting by police.
None of the charges involved allegations of violence.
As a white man, Berger said it’s imperative he continue to participate in protests, regardless of his consequences.
OTHER PROTESTERS CHIME IN
While Kate Havelin, 56, and Brian Heilman, 34, both ended up pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges for their role in the I-94 demonstration. Both of the St. Paul residents say they still feel like they won something.
One major victory, they said, was Ramsey County District Court Judge Tony Atwal’s decision to dismiss the most serious of the three charges initially filed against most protesters, which was a third-degree riot charge.
That left the majority of defendants facing two misdemeanors — unlawful assembly and public nuisance.
The one exception was Louis Hunter. Hunter, a second-cousin of Castile’s, was the only protester charged with felonies in connection with the interstate protest.
The 38-year-old was accused of being among those who threw objects at police, but the Carver County Attorney’s office later determined it lacked conclusive evidence linking Hunter to the allegations and dropped his charges.
That was the second victory, the protesters said.
At that point, many of the others facing charges who had resisted resolving their cases unless the charges against Hunter were dismissed decided to plead guilty to their charges.
They did so knowing they could make a statement in court about why they participated in the protest, a point both Havelin and Heilman said was crucial to their decision to plead.
“I went on the freeway because we have to change Minnesota,” Havelin said. “We have to acknowledge that we live in a place where people of color are treated radically differently and we who are white who haven’t been treated badly, we have to acknowledge that and we have to be the ones to make change.”
She, Heilman and the other I-94 protesters were sentenced to court fines and a 30-day stayed sentence, plus credit for the three days they served in jail.
Bergen was sentenced to roughly the same Wednesday, with the addition of a 90-day stayed sentence and costlier court fines.