This page is referenced by:

• 1 2020-02-25T17:02:17+00:00 Breaking windows in the courts (20) 34 plain 2023-10-25T03:32:01+00:00 Seventeen men and three women who were arrested for breaking windows appeared in court. Prosecutors did not charge seven of those individuals with the offense for which they had been arrested, but instead with disorderly conduct. An additional three men and one woman — David Terry, Julius Hightower, Warren Johnson, and Louise Brown — had the charge against them reduced to disorderly conduct after their initial appearance in court. The proportion of those arrested for breaking windows who faced that lesser charge (11 of 20, 55%) fell between that of those arrested for assault (8 of 13, 62%) and than of those arrested for looting (12 of 50, 20%) — although given that the basis for the arrest of sixteen of those charged with disorderly conduct (32%) is unknown that pattern has to be be considered uncertain. If the change in charge indicated police lacked evidence to charge those individuals with breaking windows, the decision to nonetheless proceed with their prosecution indicated some evidence that associated them with the disorder. The variety of acts encompassed by disorderly conduct fell between being a bystander and a participant in acts of violence and theft, including "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior," acting to "annoy, disturb, interfere with, obstruct, or be offensive to others," refusing "to move on when ordered by the police," and causing a crowd to collect. Possible scenarios might involve acting in a way that police interpreted as indicating an intention to participate in violence, amounting to "disorderly" conduct or behavior - most likely by being parts of crowds in the vicinity when store windows were broken. Magistrates found guilty all but one of those charged with disorderly conduct after being arrested for breaking windows. Viola Woods, one of the few defendants represented by a lawyer, "was freed for lack of evidence" according to a story in the New York Amsterdam News. Among those convicted was another Black woman, Louise Brown, and the one white man arrested for breaking windows, Leo Smith.
  
  The charge brought against individuals who were prosecuted for breaking windows was malicious mischief. That offense punished unlawful and wilful destruction or injury to property. It was a felony if the damage amounted to more than $250. Magistrates transferred eight men and one woman who faced that charge to the Court of Special Sessions for trial; they sent no one charged with malicious mischief to the grand jury. Those outcomes reflected that the value of windows, particularly those of the scale found in the small businesses on Harlem's avenues, was far less than $250. In the case of William Jones, prosecutors had originally charged him with a felony, which was reduced to a misdemeanor after investigation.
  
  Judges in the Court of Special Session convicted five of those charged with malicious mischief while acquitting only one, Henry Stewart (the outcome of the other three trials is unknown). While William Jones had his sentence suspended, the other three Black men, Charles Wright, William Norris, and David Bragg, received sentences of three months in the workhouse, among the longer sentences imposed on those arrested during the disorder. Rose Murrell received a shorter term of only one month in the workhouse. While her gender was the most obvious explanation for that difference, it may be that Murrell caused less damage than the men. No details of the cost of replacing the windows are provided in any of these cases.
  
  In any case, Murrell was the only one of the three Black women arrested for breaking windows convicted of that offense. That Louise Brown was found guilty of disorderly conduct indicated only that the magistrate was convinced that she had been part of a crowd around an attack on a store, whereas the acquittal of Viola Woods removed her further from the violence, casting her as a bystander.
  
  Similarly, the conviction of Leo Smith, the white man arrested for breaking windows, for disorderly conduct placed him at a distance from damage to a store, without explaining his presence in the crowds on the street.