Alt+left-arrow to return from a link
Full-text: November 12 2003
Protest zones: “No War for Oil” (October 24 2002)
United States District Court for the District of South Carolina Columbia Division
| ) | |
| United States of America | ) |
| ) | |
| versus | ) |
| ) | |
| Brett A. Bursey | ) |
| ) | |
Excerpt of Non-Jury Trial Excerpt of Direct Examination of Douglas Cohen Before the Honorable Bristow Marchant United States Magistrate Judge
Appearances:
| For the Government: | John Barton, Esq.
Assistant U.S. Attorney 1441 Main Street, Suite 500 Columbia, S.C. 29201 |
| For the Defendant: | P. Lewis Pitts, Jr., Esq.
1030 Carolina Avenue Durham, N.C. 27705 |
| C. Rauch Wise, Esq.
305 Main Street Greenwood, S.C. 29646-2757 | |
| Court Reporter: | Gary N. Smith, CM
1845 Assembly Street Columbia, S.C. 29201 (803) 256-7743 |
______________________
Stenotype/Computer-Aided Transcription
Gary N. Smith, CM
Columbia, SC {p.2}
______________________
(Excerpt of Direct Examination by John Barton of Douglas Cohen)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Q. Okay. As people on that morning arrived, were there any problems concerning crowd control and where they were?
A. Yes, there were.
Q. What were those?
A. The staff actually was a little bit late in being ready to let the public into the hanger, and the president was scheduled to be there — not scheduled, he was arriving early. So, it cut down our time to allow people to get into the event. And there was a large line that went past Eagle Aviation, which is to the left of this, on this diagram, all the way along the parking lot in front of Doolittle Hanger to the metal detectors.
Q. Why don’t you take that pointer and show the court where.
A. The line went from the metal detectors all the way back and up, off this diagram. It was a long line.
Q. And what concerns did that present to you as the site agent?
A. Well, with him being early and us not being able to process everyone in, in my mind at the time, I didn’t think we could get everyone in on time for his arrival. With his arrival being here — that’s the arrival door, as I pointed out earlier — and all these unscreened, {p.3} unknown public that had tickets out there, they were in an area that I didn’t want anyone in for security purposes.
Q. So, what did you do? You can sit down, unless you need the diagram. How did you handle the crowd?
A. What I did is, I didn’t think everyone was going to get in, because he was early. So, I wanted to back the beginning of this line up. So, we took two police officers and some police tape and basically they held it up in front of the line, and just lifted it up, walked back 30 people, and dropped it, and let those 30 go ahead. And once they filed all the way down to the metal detectors, they did it again. Eventually, the beginning of the line came back to an area that was without — in my mind, out of an area of concern, in a harmful way, that anyone in that line wouldn’t be able to cause the president harm.
Q. How about, were people still arriving in the parking lot?
A. Yes, they were.
Q. Was anything done to control those people?
A. Yes. I had the police that were with me by the hanger radio to a police officer that was at the neck of that parking lot to keep — have them keep all those people over there until this line filed down, so we do not add to this line.
Q. And where were you during all of this process?
A. I was all over in this area. I was walking back and forth {p.4} between sites, seeing how the processing was going, and also out here trying to spearhead backing this line up and making this a sterile area for arrival.
Q. Were you able to get everybody in?
A. We were able to get everybody in.
Q. Were you able to get everybody in before the area was completely closed down to anybody else coming in?
A. Yes.
Q. Did the president arrive early, or was he on time?
A. He was five minutes early.
Q. Okay.
A. They did arrive to the airspace early, but because the staff wasn’t ready to have a hanger full and all the guests in, they called up Air Force One and had them circle so that we could — so they could facilitate getting everyone in, because they knew once he arrived I wasn’t going to let anyone in.
Q. So, they made the president wait on y’all?
A. They made them wait.
Q. Did there come a time prior to the president’s arrival when the entire area was in fact shut down?
A. Yes.
Q. Before we get to that, two things, was there any consideration of this being what is known as a tented arrival?
A. Yes, there was consideration of that.
Q. And tell the court what that is. {p.5}
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Certificate of Reporter
I certify that the foregoing is a correct transcript from my stenographic notes in the above-entitled matter.
11-13-03
Date
{Signature}
Gary N. Smith, CM
Gary N. Smith, CM
Columbia, SC
Source: Photocopy of a duplicate original (the court’s public file copy), scanned to pdf.
By CJHjr: Converted to text (OCR: FineReader 6.0), formatted (xhtml/css), links, text {in braces}, highlighting, boldface.
This case: United States v. Brett A. Bursey (D.S.C., No. 3:03cr309 {175kb.html}, criminal information filed March 7 2003, jury trial denied June 4 2003, bench trial Nov. 12-13 2003, bench trial Nov. 12-13 2003, verdict Jan. 6 2004: guilty, $500 fine (Bristow Marchant, U.S. Magistrate Judge), district appeal docketed Jan. 13 2004, affirmed Sept. 14 2004 (Cameron McGowan Currie, U.S. District Judge), circuit appeal docketed Oct. 7 2004, affirmed July 25 2005 {64kb.pdf, 64kb.pdf}, rehearing denied Sept. 8 2005 (4th Cir., No. 04-4832), petition for certiorari docketed Dec. 14 2005, certiorari denied Jan. 17 2006 (U.S., No. 05-767).
Previous: Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss Based upon Selective Prosecution (Oct. 28 2003).
Next: Trial Transcript, Day 1, Nov. 12 2003 .
Next: Trial Transcript, Day 2, Nov. 13 2003 .
See also “Other Secret Service protest zone cases” on the docket-sheet page. Brett Bursey
This document is not copyrighted and may be freely copied.
Charles Judson Harwood Jr.
Posted Dec. 7 2003. Updated June 4 2008.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jksonc/docs/bursey-dsc-d68.html