Market Booth Squatter Appeals His Sentence

Posted by Terry Francke, General Counsel | Jan 2, 2009 | Legal Issue: Freedom of Speech | 0 |

FREE SPEECH — The Appeal Democrat in Marysville reports that a Yuba City man convicted of trespassing at the Farmers Marketwhere he said he sought to register votershas appealed the Sutter County Superior Court case and questions the fairness of his jail sentence.

"Did I deserve 30 days?" Edward James Jefferson, 60, asked Tuesday about the punishment for the misdemeanor he likens to jaywalking and for the conviction he contends is unconstitutional.
He vowed to take the matter to the California Supreme Court if necessary after his appeal filed in Sutter County earlier this month.
Law enforcement said Jefferson occupied a booth Aug. 18, 2007, at the downtown Farmers Market, then held on Center Street off Plumas Street, and refused to leave or to pay for the space.

About The Editor

Terry Francke, General Counsel

Terry Francke has a 39-year history of helping journalists, citizens and public officials understand and use their First Amendment and open government rights. With CalAware, Francke has authored comprehensive and authoritative guidebooks to California law on access to government meetings and public records and the news gathering and publication rights of journalists. Focusing on these issues in public forum law, he supervises CalAware's legislative and litigation initiatives; conducts workshops on legal compliance; helps design public records audits; supports local sunshine ordinance drafting efforts; writes CalAware Today, a blog on current developments and proposals in the law and best practices; and answers countless queries by phone and e-mail from citizens, journalists, public officials and employees, and lawyers. Francke previously served 14 years as executive director and general counsel to the California First Amendment Coalition, after a 10-year post as legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association. He has served as an advisory panel member to the National Center on Courts and the Media; taught journalism law at the Department of Communication at Stanford University; and served as an expert contributor to the 1994 major revisions to the Ralph M. Brown Act and the 2004 ballot proposition making open government a basic right of citizens under the California Constitution. Francke is a 1967 graduate of the University of Notre Dame and a 1979 graduate of McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific. Prior to his legal career, Francke worked as a weekly newspaper editor and in military and local government public affairs positions.

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