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STATE DROPS CASE AGAINST NEWMAN

The criminal case against Pittsburgh pro-lifer Bob Newman ended not with a bang, but with a whimper.

The whimper occurred November 10 in the Maryland District Court for Prince George’s County, in   Hyattsville.  

There, the state prosecutor filed a nol  pros – that is, dismissed the case, because the only witness against Newman, a state trooper, failed to appear.

District Court Judge Joel Worstin remarked that Trooper Lassiter had been in court all day the day before, to which Newman’s attorney, Matthew Paavola, responded jokingly, “He’s probably tired.”

But later, outside the courtroom, Paavola surmised, “Someone made a decision to keep Trooper Lassiter on the road, knowing the case was unwinnable.

“The prosecutor sighed with relief when she saw that the trooper wasn’t there; she did not want to deal with this case,” he added.

Newman was charged with failure to obey the “reasonable and lawful order” of Trooper V. Lassiter who, on June 22, had ordered Newman off the side of the road in Bowie, where the pro-lifer was taking part in Defend Life’s annual Face the Truth Tour.

Newman, the 76-year-old father of 11 and grandfather or 34, had made the five-hour trip from Pittsburgh to Maryland the day before the trial with his wife Joan, well-prepared to refute the state trooper’s allegations.

The trooper had charged that Newman had refused to obey his order to leave the property of the Chevron gas station at the intersection of Maryland routes 3 and 450, but Newman maintained that he had been holding a graphic abortion poster on the easement of a vacant lot next to the gas station.

At the time of the incident he had told the officer that he was within his First Amendment rights to demonstrate, holding an anti-abortion sign, along a public roadway.

He brought to the trial a June 7 letter from the Maryland Attorney General’s office advising that “with the exception of controlled access highways, there is no law absolutely prohibiting this activity.”

Paavola noted that the statute under which the trooper charged Newman “requires that he had to be on public property, even though the trooper said he was on private property.”

Tom Brejcha, the chief counsel for the Thomas More Society Pro-Life Law Center and lead attorney for Joe Scheidler in the Supreme Court case, NOW v. Scheidler, had flown in from Chicago to be present at Newman’s trial.

“When Tom said he was coming in from Chicago, I was incredulous!” Newman exclaimed.

“Of course, I can’t practice law in Maryland, but if the case had gone forward, I would be here to back him up,” Brejcha explained.

“If it went on appeal, I would have backed him up with resources – because this type of case is occurring all over the country,” he added.

During Newman’s arrest and incarceration, he had been handcuffed, locked in a cell for four hours, then put in leg shackles before being taken to the town commissioner for a preliminary hearing.

He noted that his arrest on June 22 coincided with the feast day of Thomas More, the lawyer saint who went to his death because he obeyed God’s law rather than man’s.