MA- CopBlock founders found not guilty in wiretapping charges.

GREENFIELD, MA - It took a Greenfield District Court jury about two hours on Tuesday to acquit a pair of New Hampshire men accused of illegally filming at the Franklin County Jail last summer.

"We can put this behind us and move on with our other projects," said defendant Pete Eyre, who along with Adam Mueller had been charged with unlawfully filming their encounter with officials at the Greenfield jail last July.

Eyre, 31, and Mueller, 28, both of Keene, N.H., are subscribers of voluntaryism, an anti-government movement that favors natural law over state-sanctioned law. The pair were arrested last July during a confrontation with law enforcement officials outside the jail, where they had gone to bail out friends who were being held at the facility.

A jury of six people and two alternates listened to testimony in the two-day trial, which began Monday and ended with closing arguments Tuesday morning.

When both men were found not guilty of unlawful wiretapping -- the statute used to prosecute them for allegedly surreptitiously recording their encounter with jail officials on July 1, 2010 -- the sound of loud applause filled the courtroom.

Mueller also was found not guilty of resisting arrest, while additional charges initially lodged against Eyre were dropped before the case even made it to trial.

When Eyre and Mueller showed up at the county jail last July, they asked a jail official if they could record the process of bailing out their friends. They initially were told they could film that process, but when they returned with bail money a short while later they were told filming was not permitted on jail property.

Jail officials, however, were unable to show the pair any written policies precluding filming at the jail, a public, taxpayer-funded facility. There also were no posted signs explicitly prohibiting the use of recording devices at the jail, which is why Eyre and Mueller continued filming their encounter with jail officials.

Later, when police were called to the scene, Greenfield Police Sgt. Todd Dodge ordered the pair to either stop filming or leave the premises. Eyre and Mueller refused to stop digitally recording the episode, and both men were handcuffed and arrested.

"Both Adam and myself, we felt that, at the end of the day, we didn't do anything wrong, we didn't hurt anybody," Eyre said.


Links:
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2011/07/police_accountability_activist.html

http://www.pixiq.com/article/cop-block-founders-not-guilty-on-wiretapping-charges#comment-49574