Brighton – After two trials and a ruling in his favor by the state Supreme Court, a community activist accused of assaulting a police officer has been found not guilty by an Adams County jury.
Shareef Aleem, 38, had been charged with second-degree assault against a University of Colorado police officer at a Feb. 3, 2005, meeting of the CU Board of Regents about controversial professor Ward Churchill.
It was Aleem’s second trial on the charge. The first ended in March 2006 with a hung jury. His second trial ended Monday with the jury finding him not guilty after deliberating for about seven hours.
Aleem was sent to jail briefly last year when the judge in his first trial found him in contempt for wearing a T-shirt in court depicting executed killer Stanley “Tookie” Williams. The Colorado Supreme Court stayed the contempt order, and Aleem was released after two days.
“A tremendous toll”
“I’m glad this whole ordeal is over,” Aleem said Tuesday. “This past two years has taken a tremendous toll on my family. We sacrificed a lot to defend our freedom of speech.”
During the latest trial, prosecutors argued that Aleem disobeyed CU police officer Greg Barthlome’s command to leave the auditorium at the end of the regents’ meeting and that Aleem waved his hands in the officer’s face in a threatening manner.
The defense told jurors that Aleem was only trying to back away from the officer when the pair tripped over students’ backpacks in auditorium aisles.
“I think the jury … found Mr. Aleem was exercising his right to free speech,” said Mark Burton, Aleem’s defense attorney. “He didn’t intend to assault or hurt anybody.”
Burton said the defense showed a videotape of the incident to the court that was not played in the previous trial. He believed the tape helped sway the jury in its decision.
Aleem, an African-American, said the racial makeup of the later jury, compared with the first jury, also played a part.
“A jury of my peers”
“My first trial had an all- white jury. Only one white person opened her heart up and held out for me,” he said. “My second jury had an African- American male, two Latinos, an Asian woman, one younger white male, and the rest were all white women. The demographic was a jury of my peers and not … angry white people.”
A conviction would have carried a possible 16-year prison sentence.
“We respect the jury’s determination in this case,” said Michael Goodbee, spokesman for the Adams County district attorney’s office. “However, we continue to believe the officer’s conduct was appropriate under the circumstances.”
During Aleem’s first trial, District Judge Katherine Delgado sentenced him to 45 days in jail for refusing to remove a T-shirt featuring Williams, a gang founder convicted of murder in California.
While on death row, Wil liams renounced gang violence and wrote children’s books warning of the dangers of gangs, causing many to ask authorities to spare his life.
Before the second trial, prosecutors offered to reduce the felony charge to a misdemeanor, but Aleem refused.
