Group to protest county judicial process

Krystal J. Carman The Claremore Daily Progress Tue Oct 17, 2006, 04:01 PM CDT

A group of unhappy citizens have been granted permission to conduct a protest next week against the current practices, policies and procedures of the Rogers County court system.

The “Let My People Go Campaign: Appealing Citizens to Mobilize” group presented their petition Monday to the Rogers County Commission.

The group’s protest aims to shine the spotlight on what it believes is unfair practices of the judiciary system in Rogers County.

Heading the group is Stephen Hager, with H.I.S. Kingdom Advocacy for Truth & Justice for ALL, who addressed the commission asking for permission to conduct “a peaceful protest” around the County Courthouse Oct. 23-28.

Permission was granted after much discussion about safety issues.

“The biggest concern is safety at the driveway entrances,” Commissioner Mike Helm said. “We can’t have your protestors impeding traffic or preventing anyone from coming into the courthouse.”

Hager said preventing the public from gaining access to the courthouse was not the intent of the protest, and that he too was concerned about safety.

In granting permission, the commission limited the group’s access to a horseshoe pattern on both the back and front sides of the courthouse. This means the group will be allowed to protest along the sidewalk outlining the courthouse parking lot from the south driveway entrance to the north entrance, and the same horseshoe pattern from the south driveway entrance around the back of the courthouse, which faces the Rogers County Planning Commission and Election Board offices, to the north entrance.

The group will be allowed to protest daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

There is not a permit process, as other cities or counties such as Tulsa have in place, that organizations must go through in order to obtain a permit.

According to Assistant District Attorney Barry Farbro, the County Commission has jurisdiction over anything that occurs at the courthouse, and therefore is the entity to approve such a demonstration.

Issues the group will be protesting include:

•A judicial review of the Ashley Thompson death case

•The James A. Hall reversal decision overruling lower court Special Judge Erin O’Quin’s former decision appealed to the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals

•The “merciful leniency and political pandering of a father to solicit for his son, Earnest Eugene Haynes, as a ‘pauper’ in getting his son’s defense paid by the tax paying citizens.”

•Revocation decision mandating Jamie Banzet out of Rogers County Drug Court and returning her custody to Oklahoma Department of Corrections.

The family of Ashley Thomspon, whose death was ruled a suicide in 2004, said, “we will not be involved with this agenda and we will not be there to picket the courthouse.”

Hager claims there are “far too many other misjudgments to specifically mention in this venue that we will demand be revisited and scrutinized by the courts to insure that they have not only meted out a fair and equitable measure of justice but a gracious dose of leniency of forgiveness afforded Earnest Eugene Haynes that we applaud in part and deplore in its administrative application.”

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