After his arrest at a protest last fall, charges against civil rights attorney Jordan Kushner were dropped Friday.
Kushner fought the three misdemeanors — disorderly conduct, trespassing and obstruction of legal process — he faced after being arrested at a protest at the University’s Law School Nov. 3. The Minneapolis City Attorney’s Office dismissed the complaints against him, citing “prosecutorial discretion” as the reason for the decision, according to a Hennepin County District Court document.
“A prosecutor’s job is not to always seek conviction. … This was a very minor thing,” attorney Stephen Grigsby said.
Kushner was arrested while attending a lecture by Moshe Halbertal, an Israeli law professor. He said University police officers targeted him because he was taking a video as they removed protesters from the event.
Police officers alleged that Kushner refused to stop filming and was “kicking and screaming” while they dragged him out of the lecture hall.
His trial was set to begin July 11, and Kushner planned to represent himself alongside Grigsby.
“Even if the prosecutors believed at some point that they may have been able to obtain a conviction, it would have been within their mandate to dismiss a case like this anyway,” Grigsby said.
The city attorney filed a motion for a gag order against lawyers and the unnamed jury in this case last month, which was also dismissed.
Kushner has been arrested and charged on similar accounts three times in the past, all of which ended in dismissals.
