A jury has found Sheila Buck not guilty of misdemeanor obstruction in her arrest outside former president Donald Trump’s rally in June 2020.
Tulsa police arrested Buck after she refused to leave a fenced-off area outside the BOK Center, where the former president held his rally. A security guard told attorneys he called TPD after Buck refused to change her shirt that said “I Can’t Breathe," a phrase used by the Black Lives Matter movement following the police killing of George Floyd less than a month earlier.
A jury ruled on Tuesday afternoon that Tulsa County district attorneys did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Buck willfully delayed her arresting officer in his duties.
Buck said she felt “happy and relieved” her case is over.
“I was confident. I felt like I had a good case, but you know, any time we go through to a jury trial, I was a little worried, of course,” Buck said.
During the trial, Buck’s attorney Dan Smolen was barred from talking about whether the city had a permit. Smolen argued initially a lack of a permit would cement a violation of Buck’s First Amendment rights.
Judge Kasey Baldwin would have considered this element separately if Buck had been found guilty of obstruction.
“Obviously, the jury didn’t need to get there to make that decision. They were smart enough to deduce from the evidence from the video that clearly they didn’t have a permit, and they didn’t have a right to remove her from a public street,” Smolen said.
In its trial brief, the District Attorney’s Office argued arresting officer Matthew Parker didn’t have to make a lawful arrest for Buck to commit obstruction. They argued Buck simply had to impede the officer from performing his duties.
Bodycam video shows Parker telling Buck she can either leave the fenced-off area or get arrested. Video shows Buck handing her phone to Parker before he arrests her. She tells him she understands he's doing his job.
“She was not arrested for protesting. She was arrested because she refused to leave,” said Assistant District Attorney Claire Hale.
Parker acknowledged during trial that the only reason he approached Buck was because security staff contracted by the Trump campaign told him about her presence. The video shows Parker telling Buck she’s arrested for trespassing, and then later changing the charge to obstruction when he gets a call from his supervisor.
“Why is it that Matthew Parker did not even know why he arrested Ms. Buck?” asked Sabah Khalaf, one of Buck’s attorneys.
In his closing arguments, Khalaf pointed out that civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested 29 times in his activism. Khalaf said “brave folks who take a stand” are why United States citizens enjoy freedoms today.
“It’s been 50 years, 60 years since cornerstone First Amendment cases have established that she has a right to peacefully protest,” Smolen said. “It was shocking to me that they wasted four years prosecuting this case, when in fact, they’ve known for 60 years that you can’t prosecute someone like Sheila Buck for wearing a t-shirt that says, ‘I Can’t Breathe.’”
Now 67, Buck says she’s since moved away from Tulsa since her arrest to her hometown Kansas City. She was a teacher at a local Catholic school before her arrest.
Buck said driving back to Tulsa for the trial made her realize what she lost by choosing to take her misdemeanor charge to a jury trial.
“I felt like it was important, something that had to be done,” she said.
Smolen said the not guilty verdict will allow Buck to resume her civil suit against the city of Tulsa in federal court. City councilors in 2023 denied Buck a settlement of at least $1 million dollars in her lawsuit.
