Trespassing trial to resume Monday for two Dartmouth students; Beilock to testify if called
Published: 10-26-2024 5:02 PM
Modified: 10-27-2024 3:18 PM |
LEBANON — One year to the day after they were arrested, two Dartmouth College students charged with criminal trespass during a campus protest are scheduled to have their trial resume on Monday in Lebanon District Court.
Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock will testify if she is called to the stand, a college spokeswoman said this week.
“Dartmouth and President Beilock will comply fully with the legal process,” college spokesperson Jana Barnello said Wednesday.
The trial has been on hold since February, when the attorney for Dartmouth senior Roan Wade and sophomore Kevin Engel subpoenaed Beilock to testify. At that time, Dartmouth hired an outside law firm — McClane Middleton, of Manchester — to try to keep Beilock off the witness stand, arguing the president did not have any “relevant testimony” to offer. Hanover police prosecutor Mariana Pastore sided with the college, maintaining in court documents that Beilock’s “opinion played no part in the State’s arrest or charging decisions.”
But Judge Michael C. Mace, who is presiding over the case, denied the motions to have the subpoena quashed.
The first day of the trial concluded on Feb. 26 without Beilock being called to take the stand. (She contracted COVID just before the trial, according to court documents.) It was the Lebanon court’s lack of a full-time judge that largely contributed to the delay in the trial moving forward. It is scheduled to resume at 9 a.m. on Monday.
The case stems from an evening last October when Engel and Wade refused to leave a tent they had pitched on the lawn outside Beilock’s office. Dartmouth officials summoned Hanover police to remove the students, who were unarmed and had been sitting in the tent for about six hours before they were arrested.
Wade and Engel were protesting Israel’s military operation in Gaza and the college’s investment in companies that profit from the war or support Israel, among other issues.
Article continues after...
Yesterday's Most Read Articles
If convicted, Wade and Engel will have criminal records and potentially pay fines, but they don’t face jail time.
Kira Kelley, a lawyer at the Climate Defense Project in Minneapolis, is representing the students pro bono. She is originally from Hartland and graduated from Hanover High School in 2011.
According to a Oct. 10 filing by Kelley, Wade and Engel “were the first two students arrested at what are called Gaza Solidarity Encampments in the United States,” which later saw scores of students arrested on campuses from coast to coast, including dozen’s at Dartmouth on May 1.
While the trial has been on hold, the case has not been dormant.
In May, Kelley filed a motion to have the case dismissed; Mace denied the motion in an Aug. 2 order.
A “reasonable trier of fact” could not conclusively say that Dartmouth had no right to have the students arrested based on the information filed by that time, Mace ruled.
Kelley continues to contend that Wade and Engel’s arrests were politically motivated rather than being based on “genuine safety concerns,” according to the Oct. 10 filing. But in his August ruling, Mace made it clear the trial would steer clear of the campus politics surrounding the conflict in the Middle East.
“The only question before the Court is whether Defendants broke New Hampshire law when they refused to leave a tent they occupied on private property,” Mace wrote in an Aug. 2 order. “The Court is wholly uninterested in why Defendants were where they were when arrested.”
Monday’s arguments are expected to focus in large part on how the Dartmouth student handbook and state law regarding criminal trespass should be interpreted.
The student handbook outlines rules for Dartmouth students and the steps that should be taken if issues arise.
The document essentially serves as a contract between the students and the college.
Dartmouth’s lawyers argue that nothing in the handbook forfeits the college’s right to call the police if students are breaking the law, according to an Oct. 16 filing.
Since the August ruling, Kelley has continued to argue that the mindset and internal deliberations of the college are relevant to the arrests. At a Lebanon District Court hearing on Thursday, Kelley said her clients’ politics “incited” Beilock — based on the college’s politics — to call police and request that the students be arrested .
On Friday, Mace ruled that Dartmouth must produce any documents that show “the College’s internal deliberations leading up to Defendants’ arrests,” from a period of eight days last October, from when student activists first put up their tents until Wade and Engel were arrested.
But that doesn’t mean those documents will be made public. Mace ruled that the documents will remain confidential unless they are admitted into evidence.
In a series of motions since August, Kelley and attorney Bill Glahn of McLane Middleton have debated the scope of the documents to be provided. Each attorney presented their case at Thursday’s hearing in Lebanon District Court.
Initially, Kelley filed two subpoenas requesting that Beilock and Dartmouth College present any documentation of the college’s “position on or response to the Israel-Palestine genocide and/or protests regarding the same,” including communications about or with “donors, alumni, or prosecutors, law enforcement and agents thereof.”
In Sept. 30 filing, Glahn argued the requests overreached and “potentially seek hundreds of thousands of documents on matters that have no relevance to this criminal trespass case” and are “broad and burdensome,” especially given that the trial is scheduled for a single day. Pastore, the prosecutor, told the court that the state argued none of the requested material is relevant to the charges.
On Friday, Mace sided with the college, deciding that only a limited number of documents needed to be turned over by the college.
The college has collected all of the required documents and is prepared to produce them before Monday’s hearing, Glahn said at Thursday’s hearing.
The cases “shall proceed to their conclusions on Monday,” Mace said in the final order.
Since Engel and Wade were charged, hundreds of other protesters have been arrested at pro-Palestinian demonstrations — some of them violent — on U.S. college campuses.
At a May 1 protest on the Dartmouth Green, 89 peaceful demonstrators, including 63 students, were arrested for criminal trespass, shortly after a small tent encampment was set up on the college green. Pastore ultimately charged 55 people with violations — one step below a misdemeanor — and opted not to file charges against the 34 others who were arrested that night.
On Wednesday, Hanover police also arrested one student and one staff member during an appearance at the college by U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Penn, as part of a speaker series tied to the election.
They were each charged with a single count of disorderly conduct after they stood and held up a Palestinian flag and chanted pro-Palestinian slogans.
Hanover Police also are investigating an Oct. 16 incident where “several suspects” painted the words “Free Palestine Divest” on the side of Parkhurst Hall, the college’s main administrative building that include Beilock’s office.
Clare Shanahan can be reached at cshanahan@vnews.com, or 603-727-3216.