A local Black Lives Matter activist was found not guilty on two charges in Saratoga Springs City Court today.
After about an hour of deliberation, Glens Falls City Court judge Gary Hobbs found Lex Figuereo, a founder of Saratoga BLM, not guilty on charges of disorderly conduct and obstruction of government administration following an April 4th, 2023 city council meeting that ran for more than five hours.
“I have reviewed the people’s exhibit number one in context with the items that both parties requested and after my review of that I do now find the defendant not guilty,” said Hobbs.
Monday morning, Figuereo’s attorneys moved to have the case dismissed in light of a February 2024 report from the state Attorney General that found former city officials and police had violated the constitutional rights of BLM activists, and retaliated against them in 2020 and 2021.
Judge Hobbs denied the motion.
The first witness called to testify was former city Public Safety Commissioner Chris Mathiesen. Mathiesen was at the city council meeting at the center of the case and had been interrupted by Figuereo during the meeting’s public comment period.
Meetings in Saratoga Springs were frequently disrupted by protestors during the previous term.
Mathiesen had been running for mayor against incumbent Democrat Ron Kim at the time of the council meeting, centering his campaign around returning order to the meetings.
His testimony outlined the raucous nature of the city council meeting that subsequently led then-Public Safety Commissioner Jim Montagnino to file charges through the Saratoga Springs Police Department.
Defense attorneys Mark Mishler and Ava Agree argued that the prosecution had failed to meet their burden of proof.
“That is his intent: to be constructive, to be helpful to toehr people, to assist those people with elected authority in the city to do their jobs in a way that actually recognizes and respects the humanity of everybody in the city. So, we think there’s just no evidence of an intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm. No evidence to disturb the functioning of the meeting. The evidence is that he was doing quite the opposite,” said Mishler.
Prosecutor Chris Shambo disagreed in his closing argument.
“I think the conclusions drawn by the defense in their closing that Mayor Kim let it be a mad house, it’s acceptable as such my client is innocent. I think that’s very far off, and I think that looking at the evidence and taking into consideration all the testimony both by the people and by the defense witnesses I believe you’re going to see that the defendant passed that bar and then some,” said Shambo.
Following the verdict, Figuereo said he felt justified in his activism during city council meetings.
“Whether it was a guilty verdict or a not-guilty verdict, whether it was a jail sentence which could have been up to two weeks as we know, we were still going to continue to speak out, we’re going to continue to express the needs and wants for our community and not be deterred whatsoever no matter what the deterrent is,” said Figuereo.
Figuereo still has two pending cases in city court stemming from his alleged involvement in planning demonstrations in the city in May without acquiring proper permits.
WAMC has requested comment from current Mayor John Safford and current Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll on the verdict.