Jury deadlocks on felony conspiracy charge
The jury deliberated for a total of seven days in San Francisco Superior Court before returning the verdicts. The seven co-defendants had been charged with felony conspiracy and multiple misdemeanors including false imprisonment, unlawful assembly, obstructing a roadway, and trespassing.
Assistant District Attorney Angela Roze argued that the April 2024 demonstration blocked traffic for more than four hours, trapping motorists on the bridge, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The San Francisco District Attorney’s Office brought charges four months after the incident. District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in a 2024 statement: “The demonstration on the Golden Gate Bridge caused a level of safety risk, including extreme threats to the health and welfare of those trapped, that we as a society cannot ignore or allow.”
If convicted of the felony conspiracy charge, the defendants would have faced a potential sentence of 15 years in prison. It remains unclear whether prosecutors will seek a retrial on the deadlocked charges.
The seven defendants were part of a group of 26 people arrested in connection with the bridge protest, known as the “Golden Gate 26.” Charges against 19 of those arrested were later dropped or deferred — meaning prosecution is postponed and later dismissed if the accused complies with conditions such as probation.
Defense attorneys argued that the protesters were acting out of a moral obligation to stop what they described as genocide and were participating in a nationwide tax-day protest against U.S. financial and military aid to Israel. The defendants said they turned to the bridge-blocking protest only after more traditional methods, such as calling their congressional representatives and writing letters, failed to produce results.
Nuha Abusamra, a public defender representing one of the defendants, said following the verdict, according to KQED: “Today remains a victory. We do not fight solely to win. We fight for the resistance.”
Rachel Lederman, a senior attorney with the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, a civil rights legal group supporting the defendants, said she was “flabbergasted” that prosecutors did not reduce the felony conspiracy charges to misdemeanors after dismissing charges against 19 of the original co-defendants. “It’s just outrageous and unprecedented that these seven people are continuing to be prosecuted for felony conspiracy for doing a fairly routine — for the Bay Area — civil disobedience action,” Lederman said at the outset of the trial.
The Golden Gate Bridge transit authority demanded restitution for toll revenue lost during the shutdown. Critics of the prosecution said the authority had never before requested restitution from a traffic-blocking protest on the bridge and cited it as another example of how protesters were being targeted for their pro-Palestinian views. The restitution claims were resolved before trial with individual defendants paying three- and low-four-figure sums.
The 4,200-foot bridge connecting San Francisco and Marin County has been the site of multiple protests since the late 1980s for causes including the AIDS epidemic, environmentalism, and the Black Lives Matter movement.