More than four dozen people were arrested and charged with domestic terrorism in December 2022, in response to their effort to Stop Cop City, the state-of-the-art police training facility in Atlanta that finally opened last year. Many had done no more than attend a music festival in the forest near the construction site. Those individuals and others — a total of 61 activists — were additionally charged under the state of Georgia’s organized crime, or RICO, statute for their actions in opposition to the police training center.
On Aug. 15, a judge in DeKalb County, the county where Cop City is located near Atlanta, dismissed domestic terrorism charges against one defendant, who had argued that her rights were being violated for having these serious charges hang over her head for 2½ years.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Xavier de Janon, the attorney representing Jamie Marsicano. Here he explains the impact of having these charges against his client dropped, what it may portend for other defendants, and the outstanding domestic terrorism and RICO charges they continue to face.
XAVIER DE JANON: While attending the Stop Cop City Music Festival in Atlanta, (Jamie) and 22 others were charged with domestic terrorism. At that time, there had already been over 20 people charged with domestic terrorism or around 20 and Jamie’s case in DeKalb County was never indicted and neither have around 40 other domestic terrorism cases in DeKalb. And so, over two years passed now and we decided to file a motion to dismiss. We had requested for a speedy trial and a speedy indictment in 2024. And then we did that again this year, but nothing happened. So we filed a motion to dismiss. The Superior Court judge overseeing the case, held a hearing and ruled in our favor. The judge decided that the state of Georgia violated Jamie’s constitutional rights by taking too long to indict and by not giving Jamie a speedy trial as she requested.
The judge in DeKalb County dismissed Jamie’s domestic terrorism charge, which again was never indicted. So now Jamie only has the indicted Fulton County RICO case. But this is very uplifting because the domestic terrorism case is actually what really, really affected Jamie’s life to begin with. The domestic terrorism case is the one that kept her in jail, put on an ankle monitor, took away the passport, got her banned from school and so on and so forth. So yeah, it’s very great that this case is no longer over her head.
MELINDA TUHUS: Given that you said the vast majority of the other people arrested have also not been indicted, it seems like there would be good grounds for dismissing all of them. Do you know what’s happening with that? Are you representing other people? Are other lawyers going to do that and will they have the same judge?
XAVIER DE JANON: Yes. So the judge on the Fulton County RICO cases is Kevin Farmer, and I think the reality of only having one charge, if you are only facing the RICO, it is harder for the state to pressure a defendant to cooperate. When someone is charged with multiple accusations, it is easy for the state to say, “Alright, look, I’ll drop these or lower that or give you a break over here in exchange of you doing something for the state.” We see this all the time. The government brings 20 charges against someone and then in exchange of something drops 19, right? And you plead guilty to one. So that is a very big benefit of only now facing the RICO. There’s just less pressure on a criminal defendant to take a plea or to make another decision in their case.
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