In November, students gathered outside of the Cal State University Board of Trustees meeting in Long Beach to protest a 9 percent tuition increase, and University of California, Los Angeles sophomore Seth Newmeyer stood with them.
Now — nearly four months later — Newmeyer stood before a court judge instead.
The Long Beach City Prosecutor has filed two misdemeanor charges against Newmeyer, including failure to disperse and a $32,000 vandalism charge — the cost to replace a glass door broken at the protest.
In his arraignment on Tuesday at the Long Beach Superior Courthouse, Newmeyer pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Newmeyer said he is unable to afford a lawyer to represent him in court, so he applied for a public defender.
However, the results were not what he expected.
“[The public defender] didn’t really know what was going on with the case,” he said. “He had no idea what this case was really about.”
Newmeyer attributed this to the hundreds of cases public defenders are assigned at a time, making them distracted and less able to represent their clients adequately.
“The situation is a lot worse than I had anticipated and hoped for,” Newmeyer said.
If found guilty of the charges, Newmeyer will have to reimburse the CSU for the cost of replacing the glass door.
CSU spokesman Erik Fallis told the Long Beach Press-Telegram that the door cost more than $32,000 to replace. This reflects the price of replacing the glass, hardware and assembly of the door, he said.
Newmeyer originally faced four charges on the day of his arrest: assault and battery on an officer with a deadly weapon (the door), vandalism and obstruction of justice.
He was one of four students arrested after the protest turned violent, which resulted in the shattering of a glass door that cut a police officer’s arm.
Newmeyer’s case was given to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, which “explicitly rejected all of [his] charges” due to video evidence, Newmeyer said.
Then in early February, Newmeyer received charges from the city prosecutor, he said.
In a released document, Newmeyer blamed the CSU for instigating these charges, saying it pushed the city prosecutor into pursuing the case.
According to Fallis, however, the CSU has had nothing to do with it.
“It’s not the CSU leading any of this,” he said. “The CSU cannot tell the prosecutor to move forward.”
The city prosecutor’s office may file charges if prosecutors feel there is enough evidence, Fallis told the Press-Telegram. He said this does not require the victim to pursue the case.
Newmeyer is scheduled to appear in court again on March 23 for a pretrial, he said. The date of the trial is set for April 17, but is tentative.
Newmeyer said he believes the pretrial will focus on trying to settle a deal between himself and the prosecutor.
“The deal revolves around paying back for the door, which is not going to happen,” Newmeyer said. “I strongly anticipate this going to trial.”