WASHINGTON ― A woman who was convicted after laughing at Attorney General Jeff Sessions during his confirmation hearing is asking a judge to throw out the jury’s verdict in her case, contending the jury “was not reasonable in its evaluation of the evidence.”
An attorney for Desiree Fairooz argued there is no evidence that her laughter disrupted or disturbed the hearing, and that she shouldn’t be convicted for questioning the reason for her arrest after she was taken into custody.
“Ms. Fairooz’s brief reflexive burst of noise, be it laughter or an audible gasp, clearly cannot sustain a conviction for either of the counts in the information,” her lawyer, Sam Bogash, wrote. “So the only other basis for her conviction to anything are her statements after the U.S. Capitol Police arrested her for that laughing. Those statements merely expressed surprise at being arrested.”
A rookie Capitol Hill Police officer arrested Fairooz, a protester affiliated with the group Code Pink, after she laughed when Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said Sessions had a “clear and well-documented” record of “treating all Americans equally under the law.” (The Senate rejected Sessions’ nomination as a federal judge in the 1980s due to concerns about his record on race.)
Justice Department attorneys trying the case insisted that “laughter is enough” to warrant a charge against Fairooz, but jurors who spoke with HuffPost after the verdict said they were focused on Fairooz’s conduct after she was taken into custody.