Man arrested at Kansas City library describes plea deal he says he was offered

A man arrested along with a librarian during a public event at a Kansas City library earlier this year says city prosecutors offered him a plea deal on the condition that he release police and private security from civil liability in the incident.

The man, library visitor Jeremy Rothe-Kushel, and the librarian, Steve Woolfolk, have refused plea offers, arguing that the arrests violated their First Amendment rights. Both plan to fight their case in city court. A hearing in the case is scheduled for Wednesday.

Rothe-Kushel said he was offered a plea deal of 30 hours of community service and no jail time if he signed a document that would keep anyone involved from being sued.

Police arrested the men during a May 9 talk by Middle East expert and diplomat Dennis Ross at the Plaza library. Rothe-Kushel, of Lawrence, was seized by off-duty police working with private security as he spoke to Ross during the question-and-answer portion of the talk. Woolfolk, the library’s director of public programming, was arrested when he tried to intervene.

Rothe-Kushel faces a city charge of trespassing and resisting arrest. Woolfolk is charged with interfering in Rothe-Kushel’s arrest.

Both men said they did nothing wrong and had no interest in any plea that would involve admitting guilt.

“First of all, this is not the correct way to discuss civil liability, when I’m still under threat of charges that could put me in jail,” Rothe-Kushel said. “And the information is already out in the public that these charges could be specious.”

The head of the city’s library system, R. Crosby Kemper III — backed by the American Library Association — has protested the arrests and charges, saying they cut to the core of the library’s function as a place to exchange ideas freely.

But police have stood by the arrests, and city prosecutor Lowell Gard said his office is prepared to go to trial.

“If the police say, ‘We’re going to handcuff you,’ you need to not fight,” Gard said. “We don’t want to encourage anyone to resist arrest.”

Gard declined to discuss the plea negotiations but said a release from civil liability would not be part of a plea offer written by the city prosecutor’s office.

Civil liability could be a part of negotiations between other parties in the case, including the defendants, the police, the library and the Jewish Community Foundation, a sponsor of the event. The Jewish Community Foundation hired the off-duty police and security. The Truman Library Institute also sponsored the May 9 event.

If those parties came to an agreement, Gard said, the prosecutor could sign off on dismissing the charges.

The Jewish Community Foundation’s interest in the plea negotiation could be explained if it were considered the victim of the trespassing in which Rothe-Kushel was charged, Gard said.

But library officials have said the event belonged to the library and that they had instructed the Jewish Community Foundation that its private security was not to remove anyone except in case of imminent danger.

Rothe-Kushel said he believed the Jewish Community Foundation sought protection from civil liability to protect against a possible lawsuit. He said he received the plea offer from his attorney after a meeting at the city prosecutor’s office on Aug. 10.

The Jewish Community Foundation declined to comment on the case.

For Rothe-Kushel, a key question is whether he was disrupting the event and trespassing.

Standing right behind him, in line to ask a question, was Ian Munro, of Kansas City. Munro said he found Rothe-Kushel’s comments rambling and hard to understand, but didn’t see him as disruptive.

“I didn’t think it was right to remove him. He hadn’t done anything,” Munro said. “He wasn’t asking a clear question, but that was it. He should have been allowed his time.

“It sounds like they made a mistake in letting someone who had a political opinion decide,” Munro said.

Wednesday’s hearing in city court will concern evidence yet to be entered in the case. A judge may set a trial date.

As the case works through the courts, the defendants have unanswered questions about why it took so long for the Police Department to provide a written report on the arrests.

In court documents, Woolfolk’s attorney, Bronwyn Werner, wrote that she repeatedly asked for a police report but didn’t receive it for months after the arrests.

Capt. Stacey Graves, a Kansas City police spokeswoman, said she was not able to explain the delay. “There’s no reason for us to withhold that,” she said.

This story was originally published November 15, 2016 at 4:20 PM with the headline "Man arrested at Kansas City library describes plea deal he says he was offered."