Word: viola
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Judge Edward M. Viola ruled that arrested demonstrators must stand trial on criminal trespass charges, despite Harvard's formal request that the charges be dropped...
April 20: Defense attorneys for the 174 accused demonstrators asked trial judge M. Edward Viola to drop criminal trespass charges against their clients. The attorneys argued that the students had not heard warnings to leave the building before students had a chance to get out by themselves, and that the prosecution could not prove that all those arrested had actually been inside University Hall...
...Judge M. Edward Viola found all but four of the 174 University Hall demonstrators guilty of criminal trespass. Viola gave each of the convicted trespassers a $20 fine; 140 of them said they would appeal. Viola freed two students who said they were arrested outside the Hall and postponed judgment on two others who had not entered the Hall until several hours after Dean Ford's warning about criminal trespass charges...
Offner's case is now on appeal. In view of both the excessively harsh and politically motivated sentence, and the uncertainties surrounding the charge itself, Judge Viola's decisions should be overruled...
...passing sentence on Offner in East Cambridge District Court on Friday, Viola clearly indicated that it was the political context of Offner's act, rather than the act itself, which produced the extraordinarily harsh penalty. After the Commonwealth had recommended a sentence of six months for the assault and battery conviction, Viola gratuitously doubled the sentence for no apparent reason other than his own outrage at the act and, apparently, at the seizure of University Hall itself. Had Offner shoved a fellow student in the way that he is alleged to have shoved Watson, Viola would never have entertained...