Two journalists arrested on the Roebling Bridge while covering an immigration protest earlier this summer are scheduled to stand trial this week.
CityBeat reporter Madeline Fening and photo intern Lucas Griffith face misdemeanor charges including failure to disperse after Covington Police arrested them on the deck of the bridge July 17.
Law enforcement arrested more than a dozen other people that day who were participating in the march. Four still face felony charges, including one named Brandon Hill who was shown on video being punched repeatedly by Covington Police Officer Zachary Stayton while face down on the ground.
Authorities say Hill grabbed for Stayton's pepper ball gun and reached into a backpack, which officers thought might have contained a weapon. WVXU news partner WCPO reports the city of Covington settled a previous 2023 use-of-force complaint against Stayton.
Stayton has been on administrative duty pending an ongoing internal investigation. Hill is still awaiting trial on the felony charges.
Prosecutors initially sought felony riot charges against both reporters as well, but later dropped them. Fening's trial is set to start Tuesday, Sept. 30 and Griffith's will start Thursday, Oct. 2.
The march protested the July 9 ICE detention of Egyptian immigrant and former Cincinnati Children's Hospital chaplain Imam Ayman Soliman.
Federal authorities released Soliman earlier this month and reinstated his asylum status.
Both Griffith and Fening are scheduled for a pretrial hearing Sept. 29 so Kenton County Judge Kenneth Easterling can consider several motions from their attorneys with the Kentucky ACLU. That hearing was originally set for Sept. 25, but was rescheduled.
The reporters' arrests drew national media attention and protest from press freedom groups. A number of those groups, including the Freedom of the Press Foundation, The National Press Club, Investigative Reporters and Editors, as well as local press groups and journalism professors signed a letter asking Kenton County Attorney Stacy Tapke to drop the remaining misdemeanor charges against Fening and Griffith. That letter notes that trials of journalists arrested while covering events are very rare.
"We are glad that initial felony rioting charges against the CityBeat journalists have been dropped, but reporting the news is not a misdemeanor either," the letter reads in part. "Prosecuting Fening and Griffith would undermine the First Amendment and set a chilling precedent at a time when local journalism is already facing dire financial and other threats."
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