The announcement follows a long day in District Court Monday in which a judge acquitted one defendant, Raul Mauro Jimenez, and dismissed the charges against two others, Peter Gilbert and Dante Strobino, after an assistant district attorney presented all her evidence.
The judge said the prosecution failed to prove the defendants were guilty of three misdemeanors: injury to real property, defacing a public building or monument and conspiracy to deface a public building or monument.
Prosecutors presented all of the admissible evidence available, Echols said. Since his office planned to present the same evidence against the remaining defendants, it no longer made sense to prosecute the case, he said.
“For my office to continue to take these cases to trial based on the same evidence would be a misuse of state resources,” Echols said.
But the district attorney said he still believes the original decision was the right one
“Acts of vandalism, regardless of noble intent, are still a violation of law,” he said. [More]