The trial of Kwame Wyking Garrett over his arrest at Seattle's Northwest African American Museum took some strange twists and turns last week that included a juror getting randomly assaulted on her way to court one day, Mayor Greg Nickels taking the stand to testify, and the prosecutor comparing the defendant, who is African American, to a "dark sheep" in the family.
In the end, the jury was hung. Four jurors voted to acquit and two found him guilty, resulting in a mistrial. That means the city is going to have to take Garrett to trial again over a single allegation -- resisting arrest -- in a case with no underlying charges of wrongdoing.
Garrett is the son of Omari Tahir-Garrett, one of the people who occupied South Seattle's old Colman School building back in the 1980s. The activists wanted to use it to found an African American museum and community center that they hoped, in part, would teach black youth their history and offer them new opportunities. But the the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle bought the building, turning it into 36 condos and what the elder Garrett calls a toy museum of cardboard cutouts.
In March 2008, just before the start of the museum's grand-opening ceremony, Wyking Garrett, who ran for mayor this year, stepped up to the outdoor podium and denounced the project in front of assembled dignitaries. On a YouTube video he can be seen throwing his hands up as plainclothes officers approach, but it's what happened after they took him inside the museum that's in dispute.
Garrett says the officers held him captive and slammed him to the floor. The officers say Garrett refused to follow their orders and they had to take him into custody. They had a right to make the arrest, prosecutor Derek Smith argued last week, because they suspected he was trespassing. But that charge and two others were later dropped, in part because the opening ceremony was a public event.
In his closing remarks at the Seattle Municipal Court, Smith argued that, regardless, Garrett had no right to resist the police. He then presented the jury with an analogy of family members planning a wedding and being forced to invite a relative who they know will make a scene. Garrett, Smith argued, is just such as a troublemaking "dark sheep."