Andrew Henderson's attorneys say they will seek to have charges dropped against their client. Henderson was charged after filming Ramsey County deputies making an arrest in the parking lot of his Little Canada apartment building. (Pioneer Press: John Doman)
The city of Little Canada has revised the charges against a man whose video camera was taken by a county sheriff's deputy, attorneys said after a hearing Wednesday, Jan. 30, in Ramsey County District Court in Maplewood.
Prosecutors dropped a charge of obstructing legal process against Andrew Joseph Henderson, who recorded an incident involving an injured man outside Henderson's apartment building.
In its place, they added a charge of interfering with or obstructing a member of an ambulance crew, a violation of state law that is rarely applied.
A charge of disorderly conduct was unchanged.
Henderson's attorney, John Lundquist, told Judge Salvador Rosas at the hearing that he would be filing a motion to dismiss the charges. A trial date was set for May 20.
Henderson, 28, was sitting on a bench outside his building's front door the night of Oct. 30 as a man with a bloodied face was patted down by deputies and loaded into an ambulance, he said. The bench is about 30 feet from the curb where the ambulance was parked.
In the revised complaint, prosecutors disputed portions of Henderson's account.
"(Henderson) videotaped the medical assessment from approximately three to five feet from (the victim) and (a paramedic)," the complaint said.
The injured man "became uncomfortable when he observed Henderson videotaping while he was being loaded into the ambulance and asked the paramedics to stop the individual from videotaping him," the complaint said.
One
paramedic asked Henderson to put the camera away, but he refused, the complaint said. The paramedic had to stop attending to the man so that he could walk over to Deputy Jacqueline Muellner, who was writing a report in her squad car, and ask for her assistance, according to the complaint."Henderson engaged in offensive conduct tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in (the victim) when he intentionally videotaped the medical assessment, knowing or having reasonable grounds to know that it alarmed or disturbed (the man)," the complaint said.
Muellner approached Henderson and took the camera out of his hands. "If I end up on YouTube, I'm gonna be upset," she said.
Henderson said he was within his rights to record the incident.
He eventually got the camera back, with no recording on it. He believes it was erased.
The revised complaint adds details from the state about what prompted the deputies' presence at the apartment building that night.
According to the new charges:
Ramsey County dispatchers received a call the night of the incident from a Wisconsin woman. She could not reach her brother and was worried about him, she said. He was an alcoholic, had recently been in a car accident, was arrested for drunken driving and had quit his job.
The man was identified only by his initials in the complaint.
Deputies went to the Little Canada apartment building in the 200 block of East County Road B2 and knocked on the man's door.
He answered, saying he was "into his second liter of vodka," the complaint said.
"(He) was void of emotion and had a bruised face, which he said was from his traffic accident," the complaint said. He agreed to go to the hospital. Deputies called an ambulance.
Lundquist, Henderson's attorney, is a private defense attorney with Fredrikson & Byron in Minneapolis who is providing his services free of charge, along with co-counsel Kevin Riach of the firm and Teresa Nelson of the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota.
The defense contends that Henderson had a legal right to be present in a public area and to record the surroundings, including law enforcement.
The firm of Kelly & Lemmons is prosecuting Henderson on behalf of the city of Little Canada.
Emily Gurnon can be reached at 651-228-5522. Follow her at twitter.com/emilygurnon.
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