(Credit: Steve Thurston, 2022)
Attorney Mark Mishler and Lexis Figuereo speak on the steps of Saratoga Springs City Hall.
Saratoga Springs Mayor Ron Kim and Commissioner of Finance Minita Sanghvi have come out to support Lexis Figuereo in his fight with the court system to have charges against him dropped. The two made quick statements on the steps of City Hall Thursday April 14 before court opened. They had gathered there at a time when they believed a press conference supporting Figuereo would be held. Figuereo is the leader of Saratoga Black Lives Matter. The press conference that BLM scheduled for 9 a.m. was delayed until after Figuereo appeared in court at about 10 a.m.
The three charges against Figuereo stem from his actions during a protest on July 14 last year when he led a group of protestors who entered the street, stopping or rerouting traffic, and from two city council meetings that grew loud and heated.
Figuereo has been charged with Obstructing Government Administration in those cases and has long argued that other people were screaming, also, but he was the only one charged.
“I don’t think speaking out at a city council meeting should be a crime,” Kim said, adding later that the legal system is there to figure out if blocking traffic is a legal protest protected by the First Amendment or an unprotected illegal act. “The role of the adjudication system is to review those things.”
Sanghvi agreed on the issue of First Amendment rights: “That’s what we’re doing is simply saying city council meetings are places where constituents go to get their voices heard, and if you start penalizing that, what happens to democracy?”
Judge Francine Vero presided over the hearing at 10 a.m. after a long, closed-quarters discussion with the Saratoga County Assistant District Attorney, Joseph Frandino, and Figuereo’s lawyer Mark Mishler.
The judge did not issue a verdict, though Mishler has asked that the charges be dropped. She expects to respond to motions by Tuesday April 19.
ADA Frandino told the judge that they are not asking for jail time for Figuereo, but that all the charges could be wrapped up in a single charge of disorderly conduct.
Jail time, the ADA said, “has never been the case.”
For Figuereo and his lawyer, jail time or not is not really the issue. They see it as a fight for constitutional rights to speech and protest.
“The issues we have raised, concerns about activists and a leader who has been singled out for particularly punitive treatment by the charges against him, as a way to attempt to silence him and as a way to attempt to scare or silence or intimidate other activists, that point has clearly been made in a very strong way” to the judge, Mishler said. “It is unconstitutional to single out a leader or any activist as a way of trying to silence people who are exercising their constitutional rights to speech, their constitutional rights to assemble, to associate with others and to demand that the government make changes.”
At the press conference after the hearing Figuereo read from a written statement that Mishler said the ADA presented as a response to one of Mishler’s pretrial motions. He was using it as evidence that the object of the charges was to quell speech and protest.
Figuereo read: “Even if this court were to exercise its discretion after trial by declining to incarcerate defendant...They require that defendant at least face the specific deterrent of isolation from society. Additionally, defendant's specter of incarceration is a required deterrent for society writ large, ensuring that others are aware that this conduct is serious and will require penal correctional treatment…Deterrence is aimed at the defendant and at the public at large.”
Figuereo continued: “I spoke too much at the city council meeting…I protested the way you’re supposed to. We have the right to protest. We have a right to assemble…When you’re Black and you’re calling people out, they decide to treat you like a criminal.
“This should have been dropped seven months ago. We shouldn’t be here talking about any of this,” Figuereo said.
The ADA entered into the record during the hearing that they have the evidence to show that Figuereo was on the street during the protest. Mishler admitted that Figuereo was at the protest, but that the issue of blocking traffic is whether he was in front of a car blocking it directly, which both he and Figuereo, who spoke before the hearing, said he did not do.
Mishler has also accused the District Attorney’s office of failing to disclose all of the evidence against Figuereo. For instance, he says that at least seven law enforcement officers were undercover in the group of protestors on July 14, but he has not seen any communications between those officers and the DA’s office. He said that he did not know if the DA has withheld that information or if one of the law enforcement departments withheld information from the DA.
District Attorney Karen Heggen told FoothillsBusinessDaily.com that she would not be litigating the case in the press, but that her office has given all the evidence they have to the
She said: "Just as the ADA has said, we have complied with all the statutory requirements as it relates to discovery."
A discovery conference hearing will be held April 26 between the judge and the two attorneys. After that, the case could move forward to more pretrial hearings or to trial.
Figuereo said the charges mentioned in this statement stem from a Petty Larceny 13 years ago.
