Occupy Oakland activist Marcel
Johnson (also known as Khali) is facing the possibility of life imprisonment having been arrested by the Oakland cops. There is a call out to flood the DA's with calls about the treatment of Marcel. I don't have time at the moment to write more but please call the DA Nancy O'Malley at 510-268-7500 and also who I believe is the Contra Costa County DA, Eileen McAndrew, (925) 803 7171.
Here are some details of Marcel's plight form the East Bay Express:
The threat of life imprisonment looms for Occupy Oakland activist
Marcel Johnson - better known by his alias, Khali - after a third-strike
arrest during the demonstration. Having spent about 15 years
incarcerated already, 38 year-old Khali said he was trying to turn his
life around by distributing food to the needy at the Occupy Oakland
encampment, where he was a frequent, vocal, sometimes endearing presence.
On December 16 he was arrested outside City Hall for violating
anti-encroachment laws — namely, for a dispute about a blanket — which
normally wouldn't have warranted more than a few hours jail time. Since
Khali was in fact violating his probation terms for a different case in
Sacramento, he was taken to Santa Rita and made to serve some jail time
in lieu of going to trial, his attorney Dan Siegel explained. There,
Khali was held in solitary confinement and not given his psychiatric
medications, which might explain why he got into an altercation with a
peace officer — the exact circumstances of which are still widely
disputed. Now, Khali faces a felony assault charge in place of his
original misdemeanor. As of Friday, December 23, Khali's bail was set at
$580,000, according his attorney, Dan Siegel.
"So he's basically arrested for littering, and a
week later he's facing felony charges," Siegel said, in an interview on
December 23. Siegel isn't representing Khali in the assault case, but he
helped persuade a judge to order a medical evaluation of Khali, in the
hope that it will explain the altercation. Members of the "Free Khali
Committee" at Occupy Oakland claimed that Khali received no evaluation
or medication for ten days after his arrest, and that he showed evidence of physical abuse
on December 22, when he appeared in court for arraignment on the
original misdemeanor (it's now been dwarfed by the assault case).
Khali's next court date is January 9th, 9 a.m., at the California
Courthouse in Pleasanton. He now faces a potential third strike, and
insurmountable bail. And if the Senior Deputy District Attorney Eileen
McAndrew doesn't drop the assault charge, the future looks grim, Siegel
said: "[Khali] is homeless. He has no money. He has no anything."
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