Salt Lake City created the Residential Targeting Picketing ordinance because our legal protesting against animal research was effective. We followed all the guidelines of the new ordinance and relied on the advice of the Salt Lake City Police Department.

Nevertheless, the same police agency (Salt Lake City Police Department) arrested us & charged us despite informing us that we did nothing wrong by protesting the day before.

Several co-defendants were found not-guilty by a jury. The four co-defendants who remain have had our right to a jury taken from us by dropping the charge to an infraction.  I worry about the erosion of the right to peacefully protest and the right to a jury trial in America.

Why is the prosecution wasting tax payer money to prosecute us for a crime we obviously didn’t commit and for one in which we can not go to jail for?

Statement of Jordan Halliday
June 28, 2010