Clio Hall Protest Trial in Municipal Court Delayed Until June

Although a trial for the 13 pro-Palestinian protesters who occupied Clio Hall last spring was scheduled to begin in April, proceedings are now on hold until at least June.

The trial, which is expected to last three days, was originally scheduled for April 14 during a virtual hearing on Jan. 14, after it became clear that the parties could not agree on a plea deal. However, following an attorneys-only conference on March 17, Corinne Sliker, deputy court administrator of the Princeton Municipal Court, told PAW via email, “The matter has been put on hold till June 17, 2025,” when another attorneys-only conference will take place.

The maximum sentence for defiant trespassing, the defendants’ sole charge, is 30 days in jail and a $500 fine.

There are no jury trials in municipal court, so if a plea agreement is not reached, the defendants’ fate will be decided by Judge John McCarthy III ’69, who was appointed to another three-year term as Princeton’s municipal court judge in February, according to Town Topics.

McCarthy graduated summa cum laude from Princeton, received a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1973, and joined his family’s law firm, McCarthy Law Firm, three years later, according to the firm’s website.

Peter Dickson ’73, a local attorney who specializes in civil cases and is not involved in the Clio trial, has known McCarthy for decades. Dickson said McCarthy is “genuinely nice” and “a very bright guy.”

“I consider him to be a very good friend,” said Dickson, “and I believe he’s a very competent and able judge. He’s had a distinguished career and he’s been on the bench long enough now to have plenty of experience.”

At an October hearing, the defendants’ lawyer, Aymen Aboushi, and Municipal Prosecutor Christopher Koutsouris presented a plea agreement wherein the defendants would have pleaded guilty to a noise ordinance violation. But McCarthy ultimately rejected it, saying that the noise ordinance charge was not appropriate given the circumstances.

Dickson said it was “very unusual” for a judge to reject a plea deal. While it is within McCarthy’s discretion to do so, Dickson said, “in 99% of [municipal court] cases, if not virtually all, the judge accepts the plea deal.”

Dickson also said the case is unusual because the “vast majority” of charges in municipal court concern traffic offenses.

Another proposed plea deal fell through in January. At that hearing, Aboushi said he believed charges would be dismissed against 12 individuals in exchange for community service, while the last defendant would be offered a conditional discharge with the option to go to trial. Koutsouris maintained that he had been expecting a plea by one person, which didn’t happen.

In an interview with Middle East Eye, graduate student Aditi Rao, one of the accused, said, “They were trying to create a lot of tension and discord between us as a collective, to pin us against each other and to leverage my guilty plea against the dismissal of 12 people’s charges.”

In social media posts, Rao linked to a petition by Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest (PIAD) urging the University “to drop the charges,” which, as of March 7, had 1,485 signatories.

Though the incident took place on campus and the University has been repeatedly mentioned in court, it is not a party in the case.

The arrests followed a period of unrest last spring when pro-Palestinian protesters established an encampment on campus and eventually occupied Clio Hall, which houses the offices of the Graduate School, for more than two hours on April 29, 2024. At the time, the group consisted of five University undergraduates, six graduate students, one postdoc researcher, and a Princeton Theological Seminary student. They were given summonses for trespassing and barred from campus pending disciplinary proceedings. PIAD said those who were arrested received four years of disciplinary probation; the University declined to comment on disciplinary action.

The trial is scheduled to take place in person, though McCarthy previously said he would consider allowing two defendants who have moved out of state to appear virtually.