Hamilton County Municipal Court Judge Dwane Mallory has dismissed cases against 38 people charged during the George Floyd protests in May 2020.
Cincinnati Police Department officers made arrests after curfew on multiple days from May 29 to June 3. People had taken to the streets across the nation in multiple cities to demonstrate against the killing of Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by police in Minneapolis.
In all, about 350 protesters were arrested in Cincinnati.
Mallory's 14-page March 31 decision concludes that Mayor John Cranley's curfew orders were too vague to be constitutional in that the city failed to inform citizens they could face criminal arrest by failing to comply with the emergency curfew order.
Mallory wrote that the order, as it was written, gave police too much "unbridled discretion."
"Based upon the curfew, as applied, free speech was not chilled; it was frozen," Mallory said in the ruling.
Mallory noted that an emergency order by Ohio did not prohibit peaceful protests after curfew.
The judge said the city's order was indiscriminate.
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