The trial started on Tuesday February 24th at 8:30 AM. It continued on Wednesday at 10 AM. Wednesday the prosecution rested after having their witnesses take the stand.
Defense witnesses were taking the stand when the trial was adjourned to March 11. It was supposed to be a jury trial, but no jurors were available. The 36th District court just gets the leftovers from the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice. There were no leftovers. Scotty had the options of rescheduling and facing another delay, or having a bench trial and getting it done.
Here is a summary of the trial:
The prosecution had two witnesses:
Olivia Moss-Fort (now promoted to sergeant) and an officer Bennett. Moss-Fort gave most of the testimony and Bennett said he arrived late on the scene. Most of Scotty Boman’s story has already appeared in the media accounts, and he testified the same way at the trial.
Moss-Fort changed her story as she went along, but some of the ways in which it differed from actual events is that she claims the WCCCD police authority never took possession of his camera. She claims that she put her hand on his to direct him to go in a certain direction and that she did not see him attempting to hand out any literature (but rather found some literature around the campus later). She claims she was not directing him to the car, but “wanted” him to walk right out of the campus via the driveway (leaving his car behind). Apparently the version of her story that got the most traction is that Boman was “taken down” for not going the way she wanted him to go. Of course she didn’t do a good job of explaining how he was to know what she wanted. Boman later testified that he thought he just needed to move further away from the satellite clerks office, and planned on working his way toward his car anyway.
The defense had an election worker (Marsha Merritt who was not at the scene at WCCCD) testify about receiving directions (the Saturday before the election) directly from Janice Winfrey to remove or cover up her name that was on all of the “vote here” signs. This supported the legitimacy of Scotty Boman’s efforts to document campaign law violations.
At the end of the second day and the start of the third day of the trial Boman took the stand and testified to the same sequence of events that had been reported by print media in a variety of publications.
Moss-Fort was called back to the stand on the Third day of the trial and stuck to her claim that the incident report she wrote as a replacement for the first one was composed the day after the incident (at which point my attorney pointed to the fact that they were both dated as July 30th) she also stuck to the claim that this report should have immediately replaced the original even though Mr. Boman got the original sent to him two weeks after the incident in fulfillment on an FOIA request he had made.
Boman’s statement to Wayne County Community College District Board of Trustees: http://michiganlp.org/?p=4029
Here are some links to media stories surrounding the original incident:
http://motorcitymuckraker.com/2013/12/04/popular-wccc-professor-faces-trial-trespassing-campus/
http://reason.com/blog/2013/12/04/michigan-libertarian-says-he-was-roughed
http://motorcitymuckraker.com/2013/07/31/police-assault-bound-detroit-clerk-candidate-for-3-5-hours/
http://www.webcitation.org/6IaRgYClr
http://watchdogwire.com/michigan/2013/12/05/mi-scotty-boman-charged-with-trespassing/
http://www.examiner.com/article/detroit-professor-to-stand-trial-for-trespassing-at-his-own-college
