Gaertner apparently felt she had to say something about the endorsement, as the only other candidate with the gender and pro-choice profile fitting EMILY’s List’s specifications:

Minnesotans take a lot of pride in their independent spirit. Endorsements are helpful, but at the end of the day, Minnesotans want to vote for a proven decision-maker who can resolve this budget deficit. They want a problem-solver who will help make government less partisan and more efficient. My campaign will continue to show that I am that candidate.

But before she can wrangle with the state’s budget deficit, Gaertner must face an endorsement deficit with Kelliher.

Kelliher has had a good haul of nods this week, while Gaertner got snubbed by a judge who opted to try the RNC Eight defendants together rather than individually, as Gaertner’s office had sought.

The RNC Eight are greeting that news as a victory.

In a statement, co-defendant Luce Guillen-Givins said, ”This is an affirmation from Judge Warner of what we’ve argued all along: that separation for trial would have undermined the interest of justice in this case. Our best defense comes through standing in solidarity with each other, both inside and outside of the courtroom.”

Ramsey District Court Judge Teresa R. Warner “saw through” Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner’s bid for multiple trials that would increase chances for a conviction, said Bob Kolstad, attorney for co-defendant Nathanael Secor.

No trial date has yet been set.

In other rulings, Warner granted some defense requests for information about the evidence against them, but denied a request for disclosure of evidence from seized personal computers in accessible format, according to the RNC Eight.

Last April, Gaertner’s office dropped terrorism charges against the eight.

Elsewhere in Minnesota headlines this morning …

TWIN CITIES: Talk of succession. A big-city mayor winning the guv race would trigger seldom-used plans for a fill-in. [MinnPost]

MINNEAPOLIS: Email scandal on appeal. The city wants to overturn a judge who said Council Member Lisa Goodman’s emails show she wasn’t fair to a developer. [Star Tribune]

STATEWIDE: Kids are too fat. So said U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar at a hearing on heath care reform yesterday. [St. Cloud Times]

MINNEAPOLIS: Get your own show. WCCO-AM won’t play ball with DFLers seeking balance to Gov. Pawlenty’s weekly onslaught on the airwaves. [MinnPost]

ST. PAUL: Van search during RNC was illegal. That’s what Max Specktor, a member of the RNC8, argues in court. [St. Paul Pioneer Press]

MINNEAPOLIS: Stitch in time didn’t save house. Named for a past resident who sewed the first state flag, the Pauline Fjelde House, which burned Tuesday, was waiting judgment on whether it was historic enough to stop an Eagan couple from razing it. [Star Tribune]

Incumbent Gary Schiff and Dave Bicking, two of three candidates vying for the Ward 9 council seat

Voters in Minneapolis’ Ward Nine would be justified in feeling a sense of déjà vu as they scan lawn signs this fall — or when they are handed their ballots on Election Day, Nov. 3. This year’s contest for city council features a rematch between incumbent DFLer Gary Schiff and his Green Party challenger from 2005, Dave Bicking.

A third candidate, Todd Eberhardy of the Independence Party, adds a fresh face to the race and something new to the Minneapolis campaign season: He is likely the only candidate in the city who can print his own lawn signs. Like Bicking, who owns a one-man car-repair shop, Eberhardy has a small business: a sign company.

As for Schiff, last year he was mulling a run for mayor if R.T. Rybak didn’t run again. But Rybak is running for re-election this year (and, it seems, for governor in 2010), so Schiff is seeking a third term representing Ward Nine in south Minneapolis.

Meanwhile, Bicking has gained name recognition since his run last time — in part due to his daughter, Monica, being one of the RNC8 activists who were pre-emptively arrested before the 2008 Republican National Convention and charged with terrorism.

For father and daughter, it used to be the other way around: Monica would complain that everybody seemed to know her from her dad’s activism and campaigning, but she didn’t know who they were. Now, with the RNC8 defendants still in the news as they await trial a year after their arrests, Dave Bicking says he is getting used to people saying, “Oh, you’re Monica Bicking’s dad.”

Shades of 2005

It was also a three-way race in 2005, when Schiff won with 59 percent of the vote to Bicking’s 30 percent. Dave Shegstad, a third-place finisher in the primary that year, mounted a write-in campaign for the general election under the slogan “Smoke Out Gary” (a slam on Schiff for his backing of the city’s anti-smoking ordinance) and drew 10 percent.

This year, Sept. 15 is technically the city’s primary election day, but it will pass without an election and without winnowing the field. That’s because the city’s new system of instant runoff voting (IRV) eliminates the need for a separate primary election. Even DFLer Khalif Jama — who decided not to mount a campaign in Ward Nine and tried to withdraw from the race after the deadline to do so — will last past September.

For Minneapolis voters, it will be their first time using IRV since they approved it by ballot referendum in 2006. The new system means voters will rank their choices among the candidates in each race. If no candidate gets 50 percent of the first-place votes, the second- and third-rank votes of the lowest-placing candidates will be distributed among the remaining candidates. The process is repeated until one candidate can claim the votes from more than half the ballots cast.

That’s gone some way toward Schiff’s challengers replacing competition with a measure of cooperation. In 2005 the primary forced Bicking and Shegstad to battle each other for a place on the general-election ballot.

This year, Bicking and Eberhardy have rubbed shoulders at gatherings of candidates who call themselves “Unified Insurgents,” and Bicking wants the supporters of each to rank the other as second choice. Eberhardy’s game but says some of his supporters won’t do it.

A progressive patch

Ward Nine has some of the most Democratic-voting precincts in the state, judging by ballot-box support for Barack Obama last year that reached into the 90-percent range, and the percentages backing U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (in the 80s) and Al Franken (in the 70s).

Greens can fare well there too. In 2005, the Green Party’s Annie Young, an at-large park commissioner, garnered the most votes in eight of the ward’s 11 precincts.

It’s also a politically aware place, with the highest rate of voter-turnout (73 percent) among wards in the central part of the city.

Bicking calls Ward Nine “very progressive” — a term he voluntarily applies to Schiff as well. Schiff is “one of the better council members,” Bicking says, as well as “one of the most progressive.” Schiff’s resume includes work for the organization once known as Progressive Minnesota (now TakeAction Minnesota).

Schiff is also one of the council members who most frequently votes with Cam Gordon, the only Green Party council member and the only Green office-holder in Minneapolis besides Young.

Bicking touts his own progressive activism on international, national and local issues dating back to opposition to the war in Vietnam. He links problems that extend far beyond ward boundaries, like the United States’ pace-setting rate of incarcerating its citizens, to local efforts like restorative justice.

Eberhardy isn’t convinced the ward is the progressive bastion it’s cracked up to be. “It’s not too liberal of a ward, from people I’ve talked to,” he said. He finds people respond to his gripes about slack city services, lack of support for small businesses, fee hikes and tax increases.

Taxes, et cetera

On that last point, Schiff agrees. “The biggest issue is property taxes” for Ward Nine voters, he says. “It’s a problem the city’s going to have moving forward.” In contrast, he points to crime trending down and progress on populating homes made vacant by the foreclosure crisis, which he acknowledges has hit the ward hard.

(Eberhardy says he’s living proof such properties can turn around: He lives in a formerly condemned house that his renovation “saved from the wrecking ball” 14 years ago.)

For Schiff, a key indicator about the ward is one word — “quiet” — that he says he hears from a variety of quarters, including from parents now unafraid to send sons and daughters to the corner store because drug-sellers no longer hang around.

But Eberhardy and Bicking both question how long that corner store will hang on, in a city that they see as unsupportive of small business. Expensive assessments, for example, are especially grating when an urban makeover is ill-suited to the area.

“East Lake Street is not Eat Street,” Bicking says of the ward’s main thoroughfare that got a recent re-do but in his view still lacks the pedestrian cachet of restaurant-themed Nicollet Avenue. It’s unlikely, he says, that “while I’m waiting to have my heavy equipment serviced at Peterson’s, I’ll go across the street and have my cat neutered.”

Eberhardy, who also drives a school bus, only has to look down at the city’s streets for a reminder of what inspired him to seek elective office for the first time. He sees “potholes that have been there all summer” and clogged gutters that he recalls being clean when he was growing up in the ward. He’s not fond of new fees like the one for stormwater runoff. “They charge extra money to drain the water and then they can’t drain it,” he says.

The fall campaign

Bicking and Eberhardy will have to take a much bigger bite out of Schiff’s support even to send IRV ballot counting to a second round in which one or the other might hope to sweep past the incumbent on the strength of second-choice votes.

Schiff says he keeps up his door-knocking every night — even if he hasn’t kept up his campaign website since last spring. Bicking has updated his site, expanding beyond the issues of police accountability and stadium subsidies he ran on last time, and has closed up his repair shop for a month to devote more time to the race.

Eberhardy doesn’t have a campaign website or, he confesses, many resources. “Money for campaigning, I don’t have any,” he says. “Volunteers are far and few between.” A demanding work schedule doesn’t afford him many leisure hours, but, he says, “All my free time goes into the campaign.”

This is the second in a 13-part series on Minneapolis City Council races.

The full series:

Ward One: Five seek open seat in northeast Minneapolis
Ward Two: Gordon, Aigbogun and … no DFLer
Ward Three: Hofstede tries to hold off four challengers
Ward Four: Trio of challengers take on political dynasty
Ward Five: Crime and economic development dominate North Side race
Ward Six: South Minneapolis contest draws crowded field of contenders
Ward Seven: Despite full campaign coffers, lawsuit clouds Goodman’s prospects
Ward Eight: Glidden faces four rivals in south Minneapolis
Ward Nine: Schiff, Bicking vie again
Ward Ten: Four candidates vie for Uptown council seat
Ward Eleven: Three vie for Benson’s South Minneapolis seat
Ward Twelve: Colvin Roy faces three challengers
Ward Thirteen: The independent ward could see fireworks in November

Police face off with an RNC demonstrator. Photo: Paul Demko, Minnesota Independent

The Republican National Convention opened in St. Paul at the Xcel Energy Center exactly a year ago. Repercussions from the gathering — and, more significantly, the corresponding protests in the streets — continue to be felt today.

The St. Paul Police Department initially vowed that the city would present a welcoming face to Republican delegates and protesters alike. But on the opening day of the convention the streets of downtown St. Paul were lined with hundreds of cops clad head to toe in riot gear. The first day witnessed the most violent clashes of the gathering — with protesters shattering downtown windows and slashing tires, and the cops responding with the liberal use of pepper spray and flash-bang grenades — but the confrontations and arrests would continue throughout the four-day gathering.

By the time John McCain accepted the Republican nomination for president more than 800 people had been arrested, the vast majority of them in mass sweeps. So how many of these people were actually engaged in prosecutable criminal activities? A year later the answer is clear: not many.

Ultimately 676 of these cases were referred to the St. Paul City Attorney’s office for possible misdemeanor charges. But almost immediately the cases began collapsing. It was initially announced that 39 journalists who had been detained would not face criminal charges. Then in February St. Paul City Attorney John Choi let it be known that more than 300 people swept up in a mass arrest on the final night of the RNC would not be prosecuted. Ultimately more than 80 percent of the cases handled by the St. Paul City Attorney’s office didn’t result in charges.

“The overwhelming majority of arrests clearly didn’t have any basis,” says Jordan Kushner, a defense attorney who is handling several RNC-related cases.

Chuck Samuelson, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, argues that the heavy-handed police tactics and large-scale arrests were simply designed to quell dissent. He notes that in 2004, when the RNC was held in New York, there were roughly 500,000 protesters and 1,600 arrests. By contrast, in St. Paul there were an estimated 10,000 protesters and nearly 800 arrests — a strikingly higher ratio.

“The First Amendment is messy, because it allows people to speak their mind,” Samuelson says. “You need to be prepared for messy.”

But Choi maintains that the low rate of successful prosecutions isn’t necessarily indicative of wrongful arrests. He notes that the standards for making arrests and prosecuting charges are very different.

“What we’re looking at is whether we could actually obtain a conviction at trial, prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt,” Choi says. “That’s a really high bar. When you have situations involving First Amendment issues, mass arrest situations and a confusing fact pattern, it’s really difficult to get to believing that we would have a likelihood of success at trial.”

While the misdemeanor charges handled by Choi’s office have largely evaporated, many of the more serious criminal cases continue to work their way through the courts. On Monday, for instance, the trial of two defendants — Christina Vana and Karen Meissner — began in Ramsey County District Court on charges of aiding and abetting second-degree assault. The pair are accused of throwing a metal sign off the Marion Street bridge onto Interstate 94.

Other high-profile felony cases have resulted in guilty pleas. Bradley Crowder and David McKay, activists from Austin, Texas, eventually pleaded guilty to federal charges related to manufacturing molotov cocktails. In May, Crowder was sentenced to 24 months in prison. That same month McKay, whose initial trial resulted in a hung jury, received a 48-month sentence.

But the most conspicuous criminal charges, those involving the so-called RNC Eight, look to still be a long ways from trial. The eight defendants are charged with an elaborate, nationwide criminal conspiracy to disrupt — and ultimately bring to a halt –  the convention. In a series of raids during the days leading up to the convention, Ramsey County Sheriff’s deputies seized seized smoke bombs, sling shots, bottles of vinegar, buckets of nails and other purported evidence of this conspiracy.

The eight activists alleged to be behind the criminal plot — Erik Oseland, Eryn Trimmer, Garrett Fitzgerald, Luce Guillen-Givens, Max Specktor, Monica Bicking, Rob Czernik and Nathanael Secor — were initially charged with felony counts of conspiracy to commit riot in the second degree in furtherance of terrorism. In March, however, the more incendiary terrorism aspect of the charges was dropped by the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office.

But attorney Larry Leventhal, who is representing Specktor, argues that the terrorism designation has already damaged the reputations of the defendants. “Everybody’s against terrorism,” he notes. “You use words like that for inflammatory purposes.”

The cases were slated for a hearing last month, but it got postponed owing to a scheduling conflict. Two thorny issues must be settled before they can proceed to trial: whether all the defendants will be tried together and exactly what evidence will be deemed admissable. No trial date has been set. The defendants have stated repeatedly that they intend to fight the charges.

“I am not going to take a plea bargain,” says Rob Czernik. “I want to fight this. I want to see it through to the end. If I get found guilty I get found gulty. I’m not going to go down without a fight.”

Czernik and others largely blame the prosecutions on the strong-arm tactics of the Ramsey County Sherrif’s Department, which conducted the undercover investigations that led to the RNC Eight arrests. In particular, they believe Sheriff Bob Fletcher was guilty of fear-mongering with regards to the aims of anti-RNC activists.

“I totally think this is a creation of Bob Fletcher’s mind,” Czernik says of the investgation.

But Fletcher says the strength of the evidence will ultimately be weighed by a jury. “That’s why we have a court system,” he says. “The facts will speak for themselves at trial.”

Even less settled than criminal matters is the civil litigation resulting from RNC activities. Many cases are just now entering the court system. In February, for example, seven cases were filed in U.S. District Court by plaintiffs charging that their civil rights were violated.

On Tuesday a class-action lawsuit is expected to be filed on behalf of individuals who were arrested during a mass sweep on the first day of the RNC. According to Robert Kolstad, one of three attorneys handling the  case, there will initially be two dozen plaintiffs attached to the case, but the list of litigants could grow to as many as 200 individuals.

The City of St. Paul (or any other government entity involved in RNC security) won’t likely be on the hook for a dime from such lawsuits. That’s in part because the city negotiated with the Minneapolis-St. Paul 1008 Host Committee — the nonprofit group charged with organizing the event — to purchase a $10 million insurance policy to cover any legal liabilities. Some have argued that this allowed officers to behave with impunity when facing off with protesters.

“It was carte blanche for the police to do whatever they wanted,” says defense attorney Kushner. “They didn’t have any financial liability to face so they had no disincentive for violating people’s rights.”

But Choi states that this theory is “fatally flawed.” He points out that the city is always covered by an insurance policy for police actions. The only difference in this instance was that the RNC host committee picked up the tab for the plan. “No matter what we would have had insurance,” he says.

How much will ultimately be paid out in lawsuits likely won’t be known for years. But the damage to the credibility of the cops is likely irreparable in the minds of many activists.

In part that’s because the expectation created by the St. Paul Police Department of a relatively benign security presence during the RNC hardly gelled with reality. This was among the criticisms voiced by former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger and former federal prosecutor Andy Luger in an 82-page report on RNC policing that was released in January. It’s a viewpoint that’s also shared by Fletcher.

“It was a flawed attempt to keep everyone happy,” he says. “What was needed was more honesty about the type of enforcement that was gong to occur.”

The Minnesota chapter of the ACLU is currently suing Fletcher’s office over the seizure of literature in the days leading up to the RNC. But Samuelson agrees that Minnesotans were misled about what to expect during the RNC and weren’t prepared for the heavy presence of law enforcement.

“The people of this state believed what they were told by law enforcement,” he says. “I think maybe a lot more skepticism might be in order the next time we entertain one of these events.”

Photo: Chris Steller

Gov. Pawlenty isn’t the only one feeling a chill at the one-year anniversary of events around the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul. The RNC cast a few odd shadows at a forum for candidates seeking to replace Pawlenty in Minneapolis this morning.

First there was the little clutch of protesters huddling in the rain under an awning outside Mercado Central, where Minneapolis City Council Member Gary Schiff (Ward 9) hosted seven DFL candidates or could-be candidates at his regular “Breakfast with Gary” meeting.

A big banner reading “Dissent is not a crime/RNC8″ was hoisted merely on word that Ramsey County Attorney (and DFL gubernatorial candidate) Susan Gaertner had been invited to the event. (Protesters angered by her prosecution of RNC protesters have dogged her at public appearances as far away as Chicago.)

She didn’t show, but they stayed anyway. Were they transferring their protest to St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman? Not really, said one, even though he’s not their “best bud.”

As the event wound down, Schiff read the last submitted question and called for final statements from Coleman and the other gubernatorial aspirants: Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton, state Sen. John Marty, state House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, state Sen. Tom Bakk, and former state Rep. Matt Entenza.

That brought howls of protest from Ward 12 Minneapolis City Council candidate Charley Underwood and Michelle Gross, a founder of Communities United Against Police Brutality, that no questions about law enforcement had been allowed. “Please respect the process,” Schiff repeated into the microphone.

Last, in his closing remarks, Coleman compared himself favorably with the previous administration in St. Paul with words that seemed to conjure up (unintentionally) images of the days during the RNC when much of Coleman’s city was fenced off to his own constituents:

My predecessor put tens of thousands of dollars of security equipment to lock the community out of his office.

A group of activists and lawyers showed up to protest the Ramsey County Attorney’s handling of the so-called RNC Eight prosecutions. The protesters carried signs that read “Hands off the RNC8″ and “Justice Means Drop the Charges on the RNC8,” and handed out literature to passersby.

The eight activists were arrested for plotting to reap chaos during the Republican National Convention last September. They were initially charged with conspiracy to commit riot in the second degree in furtherance of terrorism and conspiracy to commit criminal damage to property in furtherance of terrorism. But the more incendiary terrorism charges were dropped in April. The eight defendants still face up to five years in prison if convicted.

Gaertner is seeking the DFL endorsement for the 2010 governor’s race. But her handling of the RNC Eight cases has raised the hackles of some party activists.

Chicago Indymedia was on hand at Friday’s protest and shot this video:

The murders have come on the heels of a widely criticized report by the Department of Homeland Security, which described potential violence from people with extreme anti-abortion, anti-immigrant and white supremacist ideologies. Was the report accurate? And is the labeling of entire political groups and ideologies — such as the DHS report and the profiling of RNC protesters — an effective counterterrorism activity?

“There have been a lot of mistakes and problems with the way the so-called war on terror has been run domestically since 911,” former FBI agent Coleen Rowley said in an interview with the Minnesota Independent.

Rowley said the DHS report on right-wing extremism was wrong, but not for the objections that Republicans have raised.

“The reports contain almost no specificity but instead, make generalizations and stereotyped comments about large political or interest groups,” she said. “It’s true that individual loners or duos may be inspired by the extremist ideology stemming from any group, to include the ‘pro-life’ groups, but you need specific facts identifying the individual instead of stereotyped characterizations about the group.”

In a press briefing Thursday, Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano said the recent murders didn’t vindicate the report and said it was problematic.

“I don’t look at those murders as anything other than terrible crimes and tragedies,” Napolitano said, according to Washington Independent’s Spencer Ackerman. “I do think, as I’ve said before, that the so-called right-wing extremist report was not a well-produced product,” she said. “It could and should have been done better. We’ve already taken steps within the department to improve that situation.”

Rowley said the overly broad efforts such as the extremist report exacerbate the difficulties in identifying those loners or small cells of extremists.

“When looking for a needle in the haystack, massive ‘intelligence’ collection about the members of the groups only adds hay to the haystack and also chills exercise of First Amendment rights,” she said. “Members of the larger, mainstream group, if not alienated by being smeared, will be in the best position to identify the ‘true terrorist.’”

Indeed that was the case with the recent shootings In Arizona committed by members of an off-shoot of the anti-illegal immigration movement, the Minutemen. Shawna Fordes has been arrested in the murders and anti-illegal immigration groups say that they had forwarded information about Fordes to law enforcement after kicking her out of the Minuteman organization.

Rowley said that alienating these groups could prevent them from going to law enforcement when a troublemaker is identified.

Minnesota saw its share of generalized profiling at the Republican National Convention in September 2008.

“The worst recent example of this overbroad targeting, as well as surveillance and infiltration, would be that directed against the RNC Welcoming Committee and other peace/social justice protesters,” she said.

Eight members of the Welcoming Committee were charged with “furtherance of terrorism” under the Minnesota Patriot Act because of damage to property of over $1,000. Rowley said that this new definition of terrorism is wrong.

“‘Acts dangerous to human life’ is supposed to be the definition of domestic terrorism not just ‘property damage,’” she said. “The use of the looser definition in the ‘Minnesota Patriot Act’ which includes mere ‘property damage’ of $1,000 or more contributed to the misdirection of resources by law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the lead-up to the RNC.”

Attorney Jordan Kushner, who represented members of the RNC8, said charges were politically motivated. The terrorism charges were dropped, but not before having a chilling effect at the RNC protests.

“The fact that they were filed in the first place and pursued for a period of about eight months does show how much ‘terrorism’ is a political label,” he said.

The eight defendants — Luce Guillen-Givins, Max Specktor, Nathanael Secor, Eryn Trimmer, Monica Bicking, Erik Oseland, Robert Czernik and Garrett Fitzgerald — are accused of organizing a vast criminal conspiracy to sow chaos during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. Last month Gaertner’s office announced it was dropping the most inflammatory terrorism charges, but the defendants still face felony counts of conspiracy to riot and damage property, punishable by up to five years in prison.

Meanwhile the race to take over Gaertner’s post is getting more crowded. David T. Schultz, a former assistant attorney general, announced earlier this week that he’s seeking the job. Schultz is currently a trial attorney with the firm of Maslon Edelman Borman & Brand. Among his supporters: former Hennepin County Attorney Tom Johnson and current Nobles County Attorney Gordon Moore.

Dave Pinto, an assistant Ramsey County attorney, is also in the race.

Current St. Paul City Attorney John Choi has formed an exploratory committee and seems poised to enter the race.  His supporters have started a Facebook group, Run Choi Run.

In recent weeks supporters of the so-called RNC Eight, accused of conspiring to violently disrupt September’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul, have ratcheted up their campaign to have criminal charges against the activists dismissed. The Duluth Central Labor Body, with 17,000 members, passed a resolution condemning the prosecutions. A petition signed by roughly 3,000 people was delivered to Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner’s office by serenading protesters. And one of the RNC Eight defendants made an appearance on MSNBC earlier this week.

The high-profile nature of the prosecutions, coupled with Gaertner’s ongoing campaign for governor, means that today’s decision to drop the most inflammatory terrorism charges against the defendants was certain to be viewed through a political prism.

“It’s becoming a real national issue of controversy that obviously is embarrassing for somebody who’s running for governor,” says Jordan Kushner, an attorney for one of the defendants. “I don’t think she’s going to get out of it just by dropping those charges, as far as the political implications go.”

Bruce Nestor, another of the defense attorneys, is slightly less cynical in assessing Gaertner’s motivations.

“I think this is a political case,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be about her own personal ambitions. … If this had proceeded as a typical anonymous prosecution, our clients would still be facing terrorism charges.”

Gaertner disputes that her political ambitions — or any factors beyond the merits of the case — played a role in her office’s deliberations.

“This case, like many the county attorney deals with, is a no-win situation politically,” she says. “In this case, as in so many, some people will think I’m too harsh; some people will think I’m too soft. I have to put aside the background noise and make decisions based on how I can achieve justice and public safety. That’s what this decision was based on.”

The news that the terrorism charges would be dropped, first reported this morning by Minnesota Independent, is being cheered by the group’s supporters. But the defendants — Erik Oseland, Eryn Trimmer, Garrett Fitzgerald, Luce Guillen-Givens, Max Specktor, Monica Bicking, Rob Czernick and Nathanael Secor — still face felony counts of conspiracy to riot and damage property, punishable by up to five years in prison. Nothing in the criminal complaints, which detail a purported criminal conspiracy to sow chaos at the Republican National Convention, has changed. The next hearings in the cases are slated to take place in May.

According to Gaertner, the dropping of terrorism charges was a routine decision the likes of which her office makes on a daily basis. “We amend complaints as a part of trial strategy frequently,” she says. “As you get ready for trial, you get a better sense of what you think the core is of your case, what you think the jury is going to respond to and you proceed accordingly. That’s exactly what happened here.”

Gaertner further insists that the decision is not an acknowledgment that the prosecution lacked sufficient evidence to secure convictions.

“We cannot proceed on a case unless we believe as prosecutors that we have sufficient evidence to convict the defendants as charged beyond a reasonable doubt,” she says. “That’s true in every case; that’s true in this case. The terrorism charge enhancement wasn’t dropped for evidentiary reasons. It was dropped for trial strategy reasons.”

But defense attorneys for the RNC Eight say it’s an admission that the prosecution didn’t have a credible case. “The reality is that they recognized that it was a charge that couldn’t be sold to a jury, and it hadn’t been sold to the public,” says Nestor. “While we welcome it, it doesn’t change what’s wrong at the core of the investigation and the prosecution, which is that the investigation and the public statements about it to date have proceeded as if these eight organizers are terrorists.”

Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher, whose office played a central role in the criminal investigations that lead to the RNC Eight prosecutions, is supportive of the county attorney’s decision. “This will eliminate one element of the crimes that needs to be proved at trial and will make it easier to convict the defendants on the charges of riot and criminal damage to property,” he says. “The terrorism charge would have been a distraction at trial and further confused the journey.”

The RNC Eight were thought to be the first defendants indicted under what’s been billed as the Minnesota version of the federal PATRIOT act, which provides for enhanced penalties in terrorism cases. Gaertner says her office was simply following the law in bringing the prosecutions.

“This law, as written, was passed in the post-9/11 atmosphere of fear,” she says. “I don’t know what the Legislature intended when they wrote the law the way they did. But if they didn’t intend it for cases like this, they should amend it.”