Five people who blocked the U.S. 31 bridge last year in protest of the Decatur police shooting of Steve Perkins were found guilty of disorderly conduct by a municipal judge Tuesday afternoon.

“You recklessly disregarded others’ rights,” Judge Takisha Gholston told the defendants — Anthony Viator, Rodney Mitchell, Sarah and Destiny French, and Sharonda Acklin — as they stood together before her bench. “You cannot trample upon the rights of others.”

The defendants, who had rejected plea deals offered by the city, were each given a 90-day suspended jail sentence, 24 months of probation, and fined $500, the maximum for a Class C misdemeanor, plus court costs.

“It’s a little stiff to do two years of probation with Decatur city when you’re being targeted already,” Sarah French said after the verdict. She said she had expected to be found not guilty and claimed she was returning from retrieving her grandson from Huntsville when she became stuck in traffic.

Several others, including the architect of the Oct. 19, 2023, blockade, Morgan County NAACP President Rodney Gordon, pleaded guilty on Nov. 7 and were given 20-day suspended jail sentences, a year of probation and $150 fines.

“I want everyone to carry on their protest activities in a way where our non-protesting citizens can still continue to live and work in Decatur and carry on the activities of their lives without any interruption or preventing them from doing their regular duties,” City Prosecutor Nicole Davis said later Tuesday.

“The offers that I made would have been a little bit less in fines and time than what they received as the judged verdict. In that context, I hate that they didn’t resolve based on the plea offers that I made to them, but certainly those punishments were reasonably within the range and appropriate for the charged offense. I wish that we would have been able to resolve pretrial, but I am thankful that everyone is being held accountable at the same level.”

During the trial last month, Davis presented several videos, including one apparently filmed by Mitchell, showing traffic on the southbound lanes of the U.S. 31 bridge stalled during rush hour for roughly 30 minutes.

The videos depicted pedestrians — some holding signs — walking in between vehicles amid the sounds of honking horns and chants demanding justice. A Decatur police sergeant identified at trial most or all of the defendants in the videos at least once.

While some of the defendants denied intentionally blocking the bridge or driving onto it that day, the sergeant said he had spent a week and a half cross-referencing suspects seen in videos posted to social media with their driver’s licenses. Police also collected intel by reviewing a Flock camera system, which reads license plates.

Viator was the only defendant who had retained an attorney, Carl Cole. Cole had argued Viator walked up to Gordon near the end of the blockade and did not participate in the protesting.

“The First Amendment is a cornerstone of our democracy,” Gholston told the defendants Tuesday. “You will not find a greater defender of constitutional rights than this court and courts across the nation.”

However, Gholston said it’s “incumbent on individuals exercising those rights” to abide by the law. She found that the city had met its burden of proof.

The defendants were given 14 days to appeal the verdict. Sarah and Destiny French, along with Acklin, promptly filed appeals after they were sentenced, and their appeals will go before Morgan County Circuit Court.

“I do not believe anyone in Decatur city who is a Steve Perkins supporter will get a fair trial, period,” French said. “I don’t think it’s possible anymore.”

City Councilman Hunter Pepper, who has been largely absent from council meetings in recent months, posted the defendants’ jail mugshots to Facebook on Tuesday afternoon and praised the verdict.

“Look at justice being served [heart emoji],” he wrote underneath the post.

— [email protected] or 256-340-2438.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.