NEWPORT — The editor of a weekly newspaper is promising to fight the criminal trespass charge filed against him while he was covering a protest against a wind power project being built on Lowell Mountain.
Chris Braithwaite, the publisher of The Chronicle of Barton, said he would ask a jury to dismiss the charge against him that was filed while he was covering a December protest in which a number of anti-wind activists were charged with trespassing on land controlled by Green Mountain Power.
Braithwaite, 67, of Glover, had tried to argue that since he was a reporter covering a news event he should have been exempted from trespassing laws.
But Judge Robert P. Gerety Jr. ruled that even through Braithwaite was working as a journalist, he did not have a legal right to go without permission onto private land to cover a news story.
Braithwaite and six protesters were charged with trespassing after they blockaded construction vehicles on the crane path to the ridgeline where the 21-turbine wind project is being built.
Braithwaite and the protesters have all pleaded not guilty.
They are promising to take their cases to trial.
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