08/14/2026
One year ago this week we celebrated the vindication of the best of America and American values at the Cuyahoga County Courthouse with the complete acquittal of the New Era Defendants Antoine Tolbert, Austreeia Everson, and Rameer Askew after an extraordinarily grueling five-week-long jury trial wherein we, our clients, and many observers (including at least about half of the jurors, who reached out to us after the case to discuss it) felt as if we went all the way through the looking glass and, thankfully, back.
Most Americans don’t appreciate enough that we live in the home of the jury trial (as Judge Vodrey described it to the jury in this case), with roughly 90% of the world’s jury trials happening here, with the right to trial by one’s peers being one of the foremost reasons the founders of this nation broke from the crown. There’s also no other nation that (at least ostensibly) protects its citizens’ right to free speech and expression than ours does, by way of the First Amendment.
The story of the New Era trial should help most anyone better appreciate these rights, as this vindication wouldn’t have been necessary but for Justin Bibb’s Cleveland Police Department and Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley’s office grievously abusing their powers to an extent that might have made King George himself blush: Public officials who dragged our clients and 14 jurors through a five week trial because they wanted to send these three community servants and heroes (including both of a four-year-old’s parents) to prison for years for the “high crimes” of (A) hurting the feelings of a few gas station owners on Cleveland’s east side with a boycott that cost these business owners at most between five and ten thousand dollars, and (B) successfully intervening in a small-time drug dealer’s efforts to sell w**d to a 13-year old that resulted in the police impounding the drug dealer’s car, phone, w**d, and scale, and shaking Tolbert’s and Askew’s hands for the work they do. For this the New Era Defendants were charged with multiple felony counts of extortion, F1 aggravated robbery and kidnapping, and aggravated rioting, among fifteen charges in total, most with gun specifications that would have carried years of jail time with a conviction on any of the counts.
In the end it was obvious to any honest person with half a brain who observed these proceedings that the New Era Defendants were targeted not because they’d committed any crimes -- let alone felonies warranting lengthy prison sentences -- but because of who they are: Which we would describe as people who refuse to accept the way the “powers that be” are apparently so committed to preserving the status quo that they require access to a permanent underclass that’s trapped in the Prison Industrial Complex: cycles of poverty, illness, crime, and dead end jobs, neighborhoods that are intentionally deprived of services to maintain this status quo, and the predictable revenue streams that come with it.
More specifically, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the New Era Defendants were selected as targets by (or for) police and prosecutors precisely because they’d proven their commitment to doing the hard work of even partially interrupting the cycles that have afflicted Cleveland’s most dangerous and poverty-stricken neighborhoods, including by exercising their First Amendment rights to boycott business owners who prey on these neighborhoods, and their Second Amendment rights to engage in armed safety patrols and community engagement walks where the police do not (as much as many police officers would be glad to if they were properly supported).
These Defendants were model citizens with no criminal history, who’d never fired their guns at anyone (which didn’t stop the prosecutors from wheeling those guns into the courtroom every day and placing them on their trial table as if to scare the jurors into convicting), and who’d received hundreds of thousands in grant funding from local foundations and even the City of Cleveland itself, which was, as foundation and city leaders testified at this trial, based on feedback from people who live in the communities that New Era serves. Mr. Askew, when this case was tried last summer, was a 19-year-old honors student at Cleveland State University, the president of his graduating class at Ginn Academy, and member of Glenville’s 2023 State Championship football team who, because of this trial, had to miss a retreat in Florida that he was scheduled to attend due to his national leadership position with his fraternity.
The relief that we felt after hearing the jury say “Not Guilty” fifteen times was immense and indescribable. At least some of this can be conveyed through the photos taken by trial observer Ruby Darwish that are shared with this post, which I hope also help convey the urgency of what’s happening in the neighborhoods New Era serves; and relatedly with the deterioration of our democracy and its institutions as we’ve steadily allowed the dollar to replace the vote as our fundamental unit of governance, which created the conditions for these farcical charges to have been brought against the New Era three in the first place.
Much more has been, can be, and will be said about this case and the players involved, including by a documentary that’s being made about it by some talented filmmakers, but for now in commemorating this anniversary I want to tell a short story that even most close observers of these proceedings have never heard.
The celebration you see in these photos, which started in the courtroom, continued outside of the courthouse (as several of the jurors came out to congratulate our clients and express their shock at how this trial unfolded), and then at our firm’s offices, included an impromptu speech I gave at the office in which I took issue with the preposterous nature of the Assistant Prosecutor’s closing argument wherein she tried to convince the jury that as much as we were referring to the prosecution’s abuse of “the people’s” rights throughout our defense of this case, that it was actually the prosecution who represented “the people.” It was a raucous speech, delivered in a private, informal, and extraordinarily joyful environment, so imagine my surprise when I woke up the next morning to see that Mr. Tolbert had posted it to his page. While I couldn’t blame him in the moment, I immediately called him and asked that he take it down, which he immediately did, and to my knowledge the video had never been published or shared again. At least not until O’Malley’s office, who’d apparently captured a copy of the video during the limited time in which it was posted to Tolbert’s page, and sent it to the office of Ohio’s Disciplinary Counsel along with a lengthy and rambling complaint in which he argued that, for various reasons related to my firm’s handling of the Tolbert trial, including this victory speech, that my law license should face professional discipline.
At first I was upset with Tolbert that he’d shared a video of this intimate moment, and that I had to defend it in a response to Disciplinary Counsel’s inquiry (which ultimately resulted in O’Malley’s complaint being dismissed without any further action). But I've come around to being glad that O’Malley and his assistants got to have this intimate window into just how joyful the celebration was of his Office’s failures with this case. While police and prosecutors are surely like anything else in that there are good ones and bad ones, and even the good ones might make bad mistakes from time to time, for how many times police and prosecutors destroy lives with their wrongful conduct without giving their victims a second thought, it seems clear that what the Prosecutors were really so mad at us about was the way we held a mirror up to them and forced them to think about what they were doing with this case and to our clients. Ultimately it was their own reflection that upset them the most, which is very understandable here and gives reason for hope that they’ll continue to reflect on these events and how they might do better next time. If anyone should be reflecting on their actions it’s public officials who are entrusted to wield state power to decide who gets charged and tried as criminals in our court system, and who have near absolute immunity from lawsuits against their actions.
Anyway, this anniversary and New Era’s work and story are too momentous not to celebrate here today. Also a great reminder to all of the importance of jury duty! TGIF and as always stay tuned to this page for further updates on this story and others.
- Peter Pattakos
