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JUDGE TO AMES:  NOT GUILTY

An Ocean City District Court judge on December 6 found Defend Life Director Jack Ames not guilty of a charge stemming from a Defend Life-sponsored demonstration on the Ocean City Boardwalk last summer.

Ames had been charged under the city’s sign ordinance with failing to obtain a permit to erect a sign.

He pleaded not guilty, pointing out in his testimony that the signs were movable and not bolted or fixed to any surface, and that he had a constitutional right to display them.

“Clearly, we didn’t erect signs.  We walked with them and leaned them against the seawall,” Ames testified, according to a December 8 story in the Maryland Coast Dispatch by Jacob Cook.

After hearing testimony by Ames, Ocean City Police Officer Charles Green and local pro-lifer Jim McGinniss, Judge Alfred Truitt sided with Ames, finding him not guilty.

The July 31 demonstration took place after a Mass at Ocean City’s Holy Savior Church at which Fr. Frank Pavone, director of Priests for Life, gave a pro-life homily.

When five pro-lifers, including Ames, took their signs to the Boardwalk at 17th Street to begin their demonstration, they were surprised to find six police officers already there, waiting for them.

“I thought, what is going on here?” Ames recalled.

McGinniss testified at the trial that, acting as a liaison for Defend Life, he had notified Police Chief Bernadette DiPino and City Solicitor Guy Ayres more than a week in advance of the planned demonstration, according to the Coast Dispatch.

Defend Life had held a much larger demonstration on the Boardwalk in August 2003 without any problems from the police, McGinniss noted in his testimony.

Graphic signs of aborted babies had been displayed at that picket, but none were used last July.  Instead, picketers held signs depicting fetal development, healthy newborns, and a picture of a grieving Christ holding a tiny aborted baby in His hand.

When the police told Ames the picketers would have to keep moving with the signs, he objected, saying that the 5-foot signs would be blown by the wind and might create a hazard.

Ames also demanded to see the law they were citing.  When they finally showed it to him, “I pointed out that it was about stationary signs that were affixed to a building, that we had a constitutional right to be there, and that I was willing to risk arrest,” he said.

Upon his refusing to remove the signs from the Boardwalk, the police gave him a written citation, seized four of the signs, and loaded them into a police van.

After Judge Truitt rendered his verdict, he ordered police to return the four Defend Life signs they had taken.

When they brought them into the courtroom, Ames was shocked to see that they had been damaged beyond repair.

“I was furious!  I said to the state’s attorney, ‘They have destroyed my property!’  They had obviously been stored outside instead of in the property room.”

Police Chief DiPino has agreed that the police department was negligent and will reimburse Defend Life for the destroyed signs.  Ames placed their total value at $600.

City Solicitor Ayres, commenting after Ames’ trial, implicitly acknowledged that the ordinance under which police charged Ames did not apply in his case.

“We don’t have anything that deals directly with taking signs on the Boardwalk.  That’s the only thing we had at the time to charge them with,” a December 16 Dispatch article quoted him as saying.

Ayres said that city officials may have to draft a new ordinance dealing specifically with demonstrators displaying signs on the Boardwalk.