Attorneys for Occupy protesters, SC head to court

COLUMBIA -- Attorneys for Occupy Columbia protesters and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley are set to appear in federal court Wednesday to determine whether the protesters can continue their around-the-clock demonstration on Statehouse grounds.

Arguments before Judge Cameron McGowan Currie are expected to take 90 minutes to two hours. Haley’s attorneys contend the case boils down to whether people can camp indefinitely on public property. Occupy lawyers counter that Haley autocratically tried to enforce unwritten rules with nothing to back up her claims that protesters were damaging the grounds.

Haley ordered protesters to leave by 6 p.m. Nov. 16, their 33rd day of occupation, and invited them to come back during daylight hours. Occupiers removed their belongings, but 19 who gathered at the base of a monument past 6 p.m. were arrested for trespassing and taken away in plastic handcuffs amid a driving rain.

“The 19 occupiers who were arrested were doing nothing even remotely like the `camping’ that the governor and the board defendants complain of at the time of their arrest. They were not even on the grass,” their attorneys wrote in court papers filed Monday.

Seven of 19 arrested protesters sued Haley and public safety officials Nov. 23, arguing their First Amendment rights were trampled when they were arrested for demonstrating on public property.

The lawsuit came after 200 people stood on the Statehouse steps in a post-curfew free-speech protest, which resulted in no arrests. At the time, public safety Director Leroy Smith called the dawn-to-dusk ban a misunderstanding and said protesters could stay 24-7 as long as they brought no camping gear.

Solicitor Dan Johnson then dropped the trespassing charges, saying the protesters broke no law.

A circuit judge granted a temporary restraining order Nov. 23 allowing Occupy Columbia to resume its 24-hour protest without threat of arrest, and specified they could bring sleeping bags and, for the first time, tents – which they’d previously agreed with Statehouse security not to set up.

An extension of that order, granted after the state moved the case to federal court, ends Thursday evening.

Currie could decide to extend the order through the case’s outcome – as the protesters are seeking – modify it, or let it expire.

The state argues the case is not about First Amendment rights, but instead only “whether the state may prevent individuals from becoming permanent squatters on public land.” Haley contends she champions the protesters’ right to free speech, but the Budget and Control Board that she leads is charged with maintaining the dignity and decorum of the grounds.

“Private citizens cannot turn public property into their own living quarters,” Haley’s attorneys wrote last Thursday in opposing the protesters’ motion. “Nothing in the law authorizes a private citizen to store his or her personal belongings on state property, much less the State House lawn, and dwell there indefinitely.”

The protesters’ attorneys argue Haley has yet to back up her claims that protesters damaged the grounds.

In issuing her Nov. 16 order, Haley complained of public urination and toilet paper strewn in bushes during the occupation that she said racked up $17,000 in police overtime and other expenses. In response to public records requests from The Associated Press, the Budget and Control Board, which oversees the grounds’ maintenance, said it spent $4,361 on halogen lights and stands to light up bushes to dissuade public urination.

The governor’s office had no records of offenses, according to its response to a Nov. 16 public records request.

“Our office does not have any official records … regarding use of Statehouse grounds by Occupy Columbia demonstrators,” Haley attorney Swati Patel wrote in a letter The Associated Press received in the mail Tuesday.

The request asked for “all files, records, and documents in your possession or control” regarding violations of state code or regulation at the Statehouse since the protesters first gathered. Patel noted grounds’ maintenance is the responsibility of the public safety agency’s Bureau of Protective Services and the Budget and Control Board.

The Department of Public Safety has yet to provide The AP any overtime breakdowns. It also has not provided any video or reports of public urination on the grounds under heavy surveillance.

The agency has provided a report of a man observed defecating near a veterans monument. But authorities could not tie him to Occupy Columbia. Protesters said they had actually reported him to authorities after noticing him walking around, trying to steal items.