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Chalking the plank: Judge won't allow bank protester to claim first amendment rights
Well, thankfully, the jury just today acquitted Olson. The City Attorney's office continues to ring tone deaf by describing the case as just another ordinary graffiti case, and that no one should've protested such a prosecution for that reason, and because he would never have served any time, anyway, let alone a year apiece for all 13 counts. What the City Attorney's office failed to perceive, however, in even bringing their ill-conceived "just another graffiti" case, is that Bank of America, which is criminal by every fair legal standard and expert opinion regarding at least mortgage practices, is also no sympathetic "defendant" in the court of public opinion regarding these practices, and that by prosecuting the Olson charge as just another graffiti case would bring that very same court of public opinion rightly crashing down on the City Attorney's office. By these terms, it is simply revolting to even have threatened Olson with 13 years. At the very least, the City Attorney's office made themselves look especially foolish to prosecute a little guy for chalking, when what he was chalking about is a hugely criminal bank that continues to chalk the little guy. That no decision maker in that office could imagine this fallout demonstrates their lack of political imagination and civic decency to lay off a minor charge not worth prosecuting for these reasons.— July 1, 2013 2:16 p.m.