The nearly two-year saga of a low-level municipal case with outsized importance came to an abrupt close yesterday when Janis Mensah was found not guilty on a technicality.
The case had taken on that importance because Mensah was arrested even while serving as the co-chair of the Detention Facility Oversight Board—an entity set up by then-Mayor Tishaura Jones to act as civilian watchdog over the city jail. And the place where Mensah was accused of trespassing was the city jail itself.
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Mensah’s vigorous legal defense, handled by Maureen Hanlon of ArchCity Defenders, was as much about staking a claim for oversight in the long troubled City Justice Center as it was about whatever sort of modest punishment Mensah faced (which most likely would have been a fine).
Ironically, the reason for the former oversight board member’s acquittal was an oversight on the part of city prosecutors.
Mensah, who uses they/them pronouns and is a self-described jail abolitionist, was arrested in August 2023 after entering the jail’s lobby trying to learn more about the death of detainee Carlton Bernard, who’d died earlier that day. After being there for about an hour, the city’s jail Commissioner Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah called the police, who forcibly removed Mensah. Police charged Mensah about a week later with trespassing and resisting arrest. They were subsequently found guilty in municipal court last year and then asked for a new trial in circuit court, which began Wednesday.
The courtroom was literally packed both days with supporters as well as staff and interns for ArchCity Defenders, an activist law firm. At one point on the trial’s second day, a TV reporter came in and looked around and, not seen anywhere to sit, turned and left. Mensah’s supporters called the case “absurd” and “ridiculous” and suggested the city had an easy out with the new mayor who could blame the whole matter on her predecessor.
Detractors of Mensah have said the new trial is really all about teeing up a civil lawsuit against the city: A not-guilty verdict would be beneficial if any such suit were to be filed. Hanlon herself says a civil lawsuit is a strong likelihood.
However, she also says that as this case has to do with civil litigation in a different sense: as the matter approached its second trial, an attorney for the city counselor’s office asked during a hearing why Mensah wouldn’t just sign away their right to sue, in exchange for the charges being dropped. The attorney for the city said that every day people make this exact bargain. Critics of this practice say it’s improper to use criminal charges as a cudgel against civil litigation.
During two days of trial testimony, both a jail supervisor on the scene that night as well as one of the officers who arrested Mensah stated that the oversight board member never identified themselves or said they were there on oversight business.
However, the efficacy of that argument was undercut by surveillance footage showing Clemons-Abdullah in the lobby before and during the arrest. The jail commissioner had had many previous interactions with Mensah in an oversight board capacity. Hanlon said in her opening argument that it begged credulity that Clemons-Abdullah wouldn’t have known who Mensah was or why they were there. Hanlon said Mensah’s arrest had more to do with the fact that the oversight board member had used their position to criticize Clemons-Abdullah and had called for her to be fired. (Jones eventually did just that.) “This case was a political prosecution,” Hanlon told SLM.
Regardless, at the close of the city’s case yesterday, the city failed to submit into evidence the actual ordinance that Mensah was charged with violating. That’s required in municipal cases, so Hanlon moved for acquittal based on those grounds. Judge Rochelle Woodiest agreed.
“It sounds silly, but it’s true,” Hanlon tells SLM. “It’s a bit of a twist.”
Though the jury didn’t end up deciding the case, a jury was seated, and therefore both Hanlon and court watchers say that double jeopardy applies and the case against Mensah is almost certainly gone for good.
After that acquittal, Mensah and about a dozen supporters walked across Tucker Boulevard to City Hall, where Mayor Spencer was having a press conference to mark her first 100 days in office.
Spencer remained unfazed during what could have been a tense moment, even as one of the protesters shouted “shame” many times at her.
The mayor recounted getting a phone call at 12:30 a.m. over the weekend to learn that another detainee, Samuel Hayes, had died at the jail. “That’s when I learned about it, and frankly, it was heartbreaking,” she said.
There was a brief back and forth between the mayor and the protesters about Hayes, who died after being put in a restraint chair. They accused her of not being transparent about the incident. Spencer said that surveillance video of Hayes’ death is available to his family and attorneys to see.
Alderman Rasheen Aldridge, who has a lot of credibility with the jail reform crowd (he hugged Mensah as Mensah entered City Hall), said that it’s too early to grade Spencer vis a vis the jail. He recounted a time last year when protestors held a demonstration at the Board of Aldermen calling for jail reform. Spencer indicated that while some of their demands—like letting everyone out of the jail—were nonstarters, she was willing to work with them on others.
Spencer spent most of the press event yesterday touting the progress her administration has made in regard to recovery from the May 16 tornado. She also talked about the “back to basics” items she accomplished since taking office, including the 1,800 potholes filled and major roads repaved.
Also, she noted, she’d restored oversight board access to the jail.
