Occupy the Courts

The Occupy Seattle trials are starting to wend their way through the court system. Five people who occupied Chase Bank on Broadway last November had their first hearing yesterday, where they pled* not guilty to criminal trespass.

Why would people who (according to police reports and lots of witnesses) entered a Chase Bank, formed a human chain with pipe over their arms, and blocked teller windows plead not guilty? Take it away, defendants' statement:

Defendant Douglas Van doesn't dispute the basis of the charges. Instead, he openly wonders why he and his four fellow co-defendants... are being held accountable for their alleged misdeeds while powerful banking officials seem to enjoy legal immunity... "People in this country are forced to live by certain rules," she [one of the defendants] said. "The banks don't play by the same rules. There have been no consequences, and it's outrageous.

When I asked their pro bono attorney David Hancock for an example of banking officials not being punished for banking-related misdeeds, he pointed me to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's suggestion that Chairman of the Fed Ben Bernanke, Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson, and Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis committed bank fraud.

These Occupy trials—and there are several of them, including that of the 16 people who were arrested occupying an abandoned building at 10th and Union—could get interesting.

It's the second, legal phase of the process: first it was Occupy Seattle, then Occupy Your Handcuffs, and now it's Occupy the Stand.