The head of the state's NAACP and 11 other Moral Monday protesters have been found guilty of trespassing at the General Assembly earlier this year. District Court Judge Joy Hamilton found the group guilty after a hearing that lasted two days.
Irving Joyner is one of the attorneys representing the defendants. He says he didn't call Barber and other members of the group to the stand in order to focus on their first amendment right to free speech- and to assemble at the legislature.
"We have some monumental constitutional violations that have occurred here they are constitutional rights that our clients were exercising, and so we're fighting for those constitutional rights, and we don't want to bring in side issues to this conversation so therefore we're trying to leave it to the point where we can really focus on those constitutional rights," Joyner said.
Author Timothy Tyson and the Reverend Curtis Gatewood are also part of this group of a dozen protesters, who were all arrested on April 29th. They immediately appealed the verdict.