,
127 tweets,
17 min read
Read on Twitter
surprised to see this first up on the docket! nancy and ryan have entered pleas of not guilty.
wonder how long it will take the photo jenna just took of me to show up on gab? her friend jack corbin probably isn’t awake yet.
the first witness is a UNC police officer. at 1:30am on the date of the incident, he saw two people at the base of the unsung founders memorial. he has identified those two people as the defendants, nancy & ryan.
the judge says he’s never actually seen this particular monument and is unsure of the size of it. i’ve never seen it either. maybe i’ll have a chance to check it out later today.
the officer says he’s seen the defendants at demonstrations around campus before but had no prior interactions with them. (they’re regulars at confederate demonstrations in the area) he describes them as “very vocal, very enthusiastic about their beliefs.”
asked about the demonstrations he’s seen them at, he describes the two sides as “pro confederacy” and “anti confederacy” and says nancy & ryan are on the pro confederacy side of things. he says he’s seen them at “at least 3 or 4” protests.
it seems problems with audiovisual equipment are a universal reality in courtrooms everywhere. the judge is unable to hear the audio on the body cam footage being played now. he’s stepped off the bench and is standing inches from the television.
the officer describes a “wet spot” on the table (it had not been raining). i guess that’s where the public urination comes in.
photographs of the “comments” written on the monument have been submitted to the judge. i’m not sure what it said (trying to find out now - but they were charged with ethnic intimidation so i assume it wasn’t something nice)
the defense is now questioning the officer. they’re making a point to establish that all of the times he’s seen nancy before, she was committing no crimes & that the groundskeepers were able to fully clean the monument, leaving no “lasting or permanent injuries” to it.
to my knowledge, there aren’t any publicly available photos of the vandalism, just that UNC stated the remarks “targeted two activists.” i have some guesses as to who they might’ve been insulting/threatening.
everyone in this courtroom is a terrible mumbler who is not properly using their microphone!!!
lindsay’s local knowledge is filling in a lot of gaps for me! i couldn’t hear this man’s name for the life of me.
lt. oliver uploaded the footage from a nearby surveillance camera the day after the incident. he’s having trouble recalling the date, but he says the request came at 7:30am after the 1:30am interaction the previous officer testified to.
we’re oddly stuck in the weeds about the make & model of the camera that recorded the footage and describing what timestamps are.
the defense is objecting to the admission of this surveillance footage because it was provided to the police by whoever manages the security footage. it seems there is a solid chain of custody though.
the defense is also objecting to the video because there is no witness to testify that the video is a fair & accurate depiction of what happened. the judge overrules that, saying if that were the case, surveillance footage would never be admissible.
judge to the witness about the video he sent the DA’s office: “you don’t know for a fact that he downloaded it? you just know that you sent it to him?” this feels ridiculous.
because of the proprietary nature of the software used by the surveillance camera, the video provided to the DA’s office was a screen capture video of the original video being played on a computer with the appropriate software.
the video of the video was made by this witness who testifies to having done this and transmitting that video to the DA’s office. it’s not ideal i guess but i see no chain of custody problem.
forced retirement for judges should not be based on age but enforced at the point at which they are no longer able to understand anything about very basic technology used to present evidence.
i’m getting extreme “who’s on first” vibes from this discussion about how screen recording software works
the surveillance footage being presented begins at 1:16am on 3/31. recall that the officer’s encounter with nancy & ryan was at 1:30am.
really hoping this isn’t a pee tape
ryan & nancy, despite their 20 year age gap & hearts full of hate, came together over their love of racism. magical. i wonder how many of their other dates should’ve ended with charges of ethnic intimidation?
the video is hard to see, not least of all because of the angle of the screen in the courtroom. it was recorded at some distance & in the dark, but i can make out two figures moving around the monument & flashes that are probably them photographing their own vandalism.
i’m not an expert but maybe if the camera weren’t positioned to capture an adjacent street light in the foreground, the contrast on what it’s actually meant to be filming would be better.
a third figure appears at the end of the video, presumably the officer who testified earlier about his encounter with the defendants at 1:30am.
lt oliver says he is not familiar with the monument or what it’s dedicated to. (the fact that it is a monument to the enslaved workers who built UNC is highly relevant to this case.)
oliver is stepping down for now but is asked to remain available to be re-called.
oliver is stepping down for now but is asked to remain available to be re-called.
“ten minute recess” never means ten minutes (it’s been 22 minutes and counting)
i’m curious if the content of the vandalism will be discussed in open court. i feel like it would have to be if the DA hopes to get a conviction on the ethnic intimidation charges. unless the defense stipulates to the graffiti being racist, which i kinda doubt they will!
back in session with another UNC cop on the stand. he was dispatched to the statue in the morning, “i saw damage to the statue - writing.”
the witness identifies a picture of the statue as the statue he’s talking about. the defense objects & the judge overrules it, clearly annoyed.
the officer took photos of the vandalized monument at 9am the morning of the incident. the pictures are passed to the judge without further objection from the defense.
he says he was dispatched to the statue by his sergeant following an anonymous call at 8:45am. he did not see or speak to the defendants nancy & ryan.
the defense says, in more of a statement than a question, that the anonymous caller said who vandalized the statue and provided a description. the officer says, no, it was just someone who walked by and saw it.
there was a previous incident of vandalism of a monument. the defense asks if his client was a suspect in that (unsolved) incident. he doesn’t give a very firm answer.
the witness stepped off the stand, left the room briefly, and then returned to the stand. not sure what’s going on here.
they’ve shown the witness pictures of some vandalism done on 3/17 (2wks before this incident). “confederate lives matter” & “silent sam revenge” were written on the monument in that instance. no arrests were made in that case. the officer says these defendants were not suspects.
they’re characterizing the messages in both instances as “similar” but have not actually said what was written on the monument in the case actually being tried here.
if you were wondering why @AylingLindsay’s coverage of the proceedings stopped a few minutes ago, it’s because she’s been called as a witness.
lindsay is a phd candidate at UNC as well as an antiracist activist. she’s been heavily targeted by neoconfederate harassment.
the defense objects to the relevance of lindsay’s statements that the defendants have harassed her online. the DA says it’s relevant because her name was written on the statue in this instance of vandalism.
she’s been asked to keep her answer about their interactions to in person, rather than online, harassment. she cites an incident from last winter where ryan shouted her first and last name at her at a protest (they’d never met).
no questions for lindsay from the defense. the DA has established that one of the people whose name was included in the threat written on the monument is known to the defendants.
next witness is steve gooch, the director of grounds at UNC chapel hill. he supervises 81 employees. he’s asked to describe the unsung founders memorial, which he’s able to do in detail. his department polishes the surface monthly.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsung_Fo…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsung_Fo…
he’s asked to describe in more detail who the memorial is dedicated to, “the people who built the university,” he says. he’s asked specifically who that is but is not able to respond (the answer is enslaved people and freed black workers!!)
he received a call between 2-2:30am the night of the incident. (an objection from the defense is swiftly overruled) dispatch told him the table had been graffitied and possibly urinated on.
there was concern that the graffiti should be cleaned off before people started coming to campus in the morning. gooch arrived at 5am with buckets of soapy water. he says there was “some liquid on the table” and he rinsed it.
he says when he arrived at 5am there was NOT writing on the table. he says multiple departments were contacted in the night after he told dispatch grounds does not pressure wash & graffiti would need to be pressure washed.
i’m a little lost about which graffiti occurred where. they’ve done a very poor job of establishing a timeline of two incidents that occurred on the same night. i believe lindsay’s name was included in the damage done outside the hanes art center.
cbs17.com/news/local-new…
cbs17.com/news/local-new…
is this witness’s name actually officer tickle? i had to have misheard that.
at 2:30pm in march 31 (the afternoon before the vandalism occurred) he received a call that there was something wrong with one of the flagpoles at UNC. the pole normally flies a US, NC, and UNC flag. the UNC flag had been replaced with a confederate flag.
officer tickle has been released and deputy jones called.
deputy jones is with the orange county sheriff’s office. there was a speech given the afternoon of 3/31 in hillsborough by linda sarsour. he says he saw the defendants around 4-4:30pm as part of a protest of the event.
ryan and nancy really had a busy day that day! a solid twelve hours of vandalism and protest.
the witness identifies the defendants carrying a banner in a photograph taken at the protest of linda sarsour’s speech. the defense objects, asking who took the photo. the deputy doesn’t know but says it was “all over the news” and that he witnessed it firsthand.
“looks like a bedsheet to me instead of a flag,” the judge says disparagingly.
the defense has no questions for deputy jones. the DA calls officer brown.
the defense has no questions for deputy jones. the DA calls officer brown.
judge is right, it does look like a bedsheet
also... this is them carrying the flag they stole and replaced with a confederate flag. the deputy didn’t specifically testify to WHAT the banner he saw them holding was. but that picture is of the defendants holding a UNC flag 2 hours after one was stolen.
the intel officer testifying now says he called nancy to ask her if she was in possession of the stolen flag that she was photographed holding. the defense objects, saying “we don’t know what kind of flag it is.” 🤷♀️🤷♀️
he says nancy told him “it was her flag that she had made.” that “she had a friend sew the flag from a picture she took,” specially saying she didn’t buy it. she told him she would bring it in when she surrendered herself but never produced it.
the defense clarifies that nancy never actually admitted to having the stolen flag, only what she claims is a replica. the defense attorney says you can go online and design any flag.
no one present is able to say with certainty what the dimensions or material composition of the stolen flag are.
the next witness is jeff hill, the former director of facilities at UNC chapel hill. he’s recently retired.
he’s asked if he recognizes the flag in the picture. he says yes, “i ordered it.”
he’s asked if he recognizes the flag in the picture. he says yes, “i ordered it.”
the UNC systems flag was rebranded and redesigned fairly recently. only a single flag of this type was ordered. he says it’s 5’ x 8’, double sided, and made of nylon. it was ordered in february 2018 & placed outside the UNC chapel hill general admin building.
hill testified that he is certain the flag in the photograph is the flag that he ordered. the defense asks him if he was present at the rally where the photo was taken. he says he was not. he’s released as a witness.
the defense has no evidence to present and we’re taking a 15 minute recess.
it’s fairly clear they stole the flag. the other charges were not well argued by the DA. there are clearly camera flashes on the video. why were those photos not recovered from the defendants’ phones? the timeline was not laid out in a way that gives the judge a strong narrative.
i’m standing outside during the recess. jenna stoney bernstein just got in my face yelling about how we’re “going after the wrong racists” and said we should be going after susan hathaway (the founder of the virginia flaggers)
a) that’s an interesting (accidental?) admission that she and her friends are racists and b) i think jenna’s just mad susan told other confederates not to work with her. there’s some real beef in the confederate community.
anyway, i’m not optimistic about convictions on anything but the flag theft. they didn’t really establish at all the importance of the purpose & message of defacing a monument to black workers.
lol 5 days after they were arrested for these offenses, nancy changed her facebook profile picture to bonnie & clyde. what a date - doing some romantic theft, racism, and piss crimes together. 
finally back in session. the DA says officer kenyon’s body cam & the surveillance footage captured them at the monument. he says the handwriting matches known samples (this wasn’t established in evidence?) & ryan’s hands can be seen at his crotch.
the judge notes that he saw the camera flashes, indicating they were taking pictures of what they were doing.
oh yikes, the DA says the graffiti included the n word (which he spells out rather than saying)
the judge doesn’t think that urinating on a statue defaces it in any way. he says public urination requires that someone of the opposite sex be exposed to the crime & nancy doesn’t count because she’s a “willing participant.”
of the specific antiracist activists threatened in the graffiti message, the judge asks the DA if he doesn’t think anyone else in “their movement” (referring to the neoconfederates) hates them.
the judge wanted to look at an exhibit again but it appears the witness accidentally took some of the exhibits with him when he left. what the hell kind of amateur hour shit is going on here.
a close up picture of the unsung founders memorial is on the screen. the message “TEAR THIS DOWN” is visible in what looks like red marker.
the defense says there’s a “huge lapse in time” between the two incidents of vandalism. the judge says there’s a gap between when they were discovered, we don’t know when they occurred.
the judge asks if it’s a crime to urinate on the monument. the defense attorney says he doesn’t think it is.
the judge says that possession of a stolen item is pretty good evidence that they stole it. the defense attorney refuses to concede that the flag his client was photographed holding is the identical and one of a kind flag that was stolen two hours prior.
nancy’s lawyer is giving his own closing, calling the state’s closing “a lot of smoke and not a whole lot of fire.” “we live in a society where you can believe whatever you wanna believe!”
he says what his client is alleged to have done doesn’t constitute ethnic intimidation (she defaced a monument with the N word)
he says the statute specifically requires that the property of another person be destroyed because of the color of that individual person’s skin.
the language of the statute is “damage, deface, injure, AND destroy.” oh how i wish legislators were more careful with conjunctions and punctuation! cases have been decided on the basis of semicolons in the statute.
if you, like me, have been wondering how they knew the puddle on the monument was piss... apparently he fucking labeled it. this picture shows a puddle of urine with “PISS —->” written next to it in marker.
the attorney argues that the university of north carolina is the owner of the property & they are not an entity that can be ethnically intimidated. further, he claims that nothing that happened to the monument constitutes defacement.
aha, we finally get the text of the rest of the graffiti. the other activist named was maya little. they scrawled in marker that she is a domestic terrorist. they also wrote “destroy this monument to racism” (on a monument to black workers)
these photo shows “f*ggots” and “n*ger” (yes, only one g) written on the monument in marker.
lol the defense says they may have been holding the flag but they had no idea what it meant or where it came from. sure i always hold 8’ banners for absolutely no reason without understanding what i’m displaying.
further, he argues that if it had been two drunk frat boys who did the same thing, we wouldn’t be here. they’re just being targeted for their political beliefs! (beliefs which prompt them to commit acts of ethnic intimidation)
aha, wait a second. this wasn’t clear when they were being presented, but i wonder if these close up images of the monument that appear to have been taken in the dark with a flash are the ones we can see being taken by the defendant in the video.
what kind of cursed evidentiary hearing would result in the DA being able to show the defendant’s own photos of his crime during closing but disallow anyone from talking about where those photos came from?!
the judge needs some time to deliberate and has stepped out.
the timeline presented was weird and scrambled. the photos may have been the first responding cop’s photos. why didn’t he detain them when he talked to them? this is all so unclear.
in addition to the racist and homophobic slurs, they also wrote: “yankee go home,” “fuck antifa,” “fuck this monument,” and “confederate lives matter” on the monument to enslaved & freed black workers.
it seems that officer kenyon happened upon the pair just as they were finishing writing & pissing on the monument. according to his body cam footage, he chatted with them about the weather and let them go on their way. he didn’t notice the graffiti until after they’d left.
the judge is back!
judge: “i guess i’m still a little confused” about the difference between several similar statutes about defacement (wantonly damage injure or destroy/write and scribble on/damage deface or destroy). he asks what the difference is between the 3 statutes.
seems like figuring out what the charges are should’ve come at a stage slightly earlier than the verdict.
ok one of the defacement related statutes was a sub-section of the ethnic intimidation charge.
the judge asks “is scribbling damage per se?”
judge says there’s no significant evidence that barnett urinated on the monument, “even though he probably did.” he specifically said no one testified to having smelled or tested it.
judge says there’s no significant evidence that barnett urinated on the monument, “even though he probably did.” he specifically said no one testified to having smelled or tested it.
i’ve never heard a judge say “piss” before
i swear to god i just heard the first six notes of dixie come out of somebody’s cell phone 👀👀
still a disconcerting lack of consensus about what is even specifically being charged in each count.
the DA contends they can be convicted of both counts 1 & 2 but not punished for both. the judge had previously said the charges were very similar.
“my belief is they are not guilty of ethnic intimidation.” the judge says they intended to intimidate a whole race of people, which the statute is not designed for. he does find them guilty of the damage to real property.
while the judge earlier said he didn’t think the state had proved ryan was guilty of public urination, he just issued a guilty verdict on the charge. defense is upset, but the judge said he was just thinking out loud earlier & he’s forgotten about PISS being written next to it.
the judge says “i don’t see how you can urinate without exposing yourself,” so he finds him guilty of indecent exposure, as well.
due to the similarity in handwriting and message and proximity in time and place, the judge says ryan & nancy are also guilty of the graffiti outside the hanes art center.
so they’re guilty of everything as charged EXCEPT the ethnic intimidation charges.
nancy’s lawyer says she is a resident of newbury, SC and a grandmother. the judge asks what the relationship is between the defendants. he confers with his client and then says “they’re just acquaintances.” (liiiiiiiie!)
ryan’s lawyer says he served in afghanistan in 2013 and suffers from disabilities from his service.
nancy’s attorney asks for unsupervised probation because of her lack of a criminal record & the difficulty of transferring supervision to her home state of SC.
“you all don’t have anything to say about this to me, personally?” the judge asks the defendants. they both decline to make a statement.
the flag was eventually recovered, balled up outside somewhere. the flag is valued a little under $600 to replace. the director of grounds is being re-called to provide an estimate of the cost of cleaning the graffiti.
gooch says the total came to: $1326.32 which he itemizes as:
2 hrs labor for the table
3 hrs labor for the arts statue
6 hrs housekeeping
6 hrs pressure washing
24 units of cleaning fluid
a box of gloves
a wire brush
2 hrs labor for the table
3 hrs labor for the arts statue
6 hrs housekeeping
6 hrs pressure washing
24 units of cleaning fluid
a box of gloves
a wire brush
the judge has stepped off the bench to think
just really still stuck on the idea that they’re not guilty on ethnic intimidation because they were trying to intimidate ALL black people not just one in particular. even though they did actually write one specific individual black person’s name 🤔
like, i could imagine the judge going with the technicality that the property defaced doesn’t belong to an individual and the property owner (UNC) wasn’t being targeted... but the argument that he chose is incoherent.
ok the judge is back and still confused about how many charges he’s just convicted them on.
45 days suspended (concurrent) on each property damage & larceny, 18 months unsupervised release.
for public urination, a $100 fine.
200 hours community service, $500 fine, and they have to reimburse the university for the $1326 it cost to clean the statues.
for public urination, a $100 fine.
200 hours community service, $500 fine, and they have to reimburse the university for the $1326 it cost to clean the statues.
well, that’s it then.
the moral of the story is: if you’re gonna piss on something, don’t label it.
also don’t get your picture taken displaying stolen goods.
