Jump to full article: Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin, 2008-04-05
Author: Katie Mulvaney and Edward Fitzpatrick Journal Staff Writers
Intro: A Superior Court jury found Chief Sachem Matthew Thomas and two other tribal members guilty of misdemeanor charges while clearing four others in an emotional case that pitted the state against its only federally recognized Indian tribe.
The jury of seven women and five men deliberated about 20 hours across four days before reaching a mixed verdict yesterday on 16 misdemeanor counts stemming from the 2003 state police raid on a tax-free smoke shop.
Although the jury found Thomas guilty of assaulting Sgt. Ernest C. Quarry by grabbing him from behind on the smoke-shop landing, they acquitted him of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.
In addition, the jury convicted Tribal Councilman Hiawatha Brown of assaulting Trooper Ann Assumpico by slamming her arm in the shop door, and also of disorderly conduct. He was acquitted of resisting arrest. First Councilman Randy Noka was found guilty of disorderly conduct, while being cleared of resisting arrest.
Though found innocent of 12 counts, the Narragansetts remained bitter about the verdict and the six-week trial itself.
"I think everyone should have been acquitted," said Councilman John Brown, the tribe's medicine-man-in-training who was found not guilty of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.
Bella Noka took a particularly dark view, though cleared of assaulting a trooper, disorderly conduct and obstructing an officer trying to place her husband, Randy, under arrest. "They took our land, another life and now they want more," she said while leaving the courtroom. She repeated -- as heard during trial testimony -- that she was pregnant at the raid. She lost her baby afterward due to hemorrhaging, she said.
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