Billy very ‘hoppy’ as charges reduced in toad case BY SARAH FERGUSON
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PHOTO FOR THE VILLAGER
arthalujah! Looks like the Manhattan district attorney is not throwing the book at Reverend Billy after all. Last week The Villager reported that performance artist William Talen (a.k.a. Reverend Billy) and Nehemiah Luckett, musical director of the Stop Shopping Choir, were facing up to a year in jail and a whopping $30,000 bail for staging a protest romp through a JPMorgan Chase bank in Midtown in September. The pair were charged with riot in the second degree and menacing in the third degree after Talen and Luckett led choir members dressed in papier-mâché hats depicting the golden toad — a now-extinct amphibian of Central America — up an escalator and into the third-floor lobby of the Chase branch on Sixth Ave. and 56th St. to evangelize about the threat of climate change. JP Morgan is one of the top financers of mountaintop removal coal mining and other fossil fuel projects around the world — industries that are the main engines of climate change. According to prosecutors, several bank employees somehow mistook people singing in toad hats for bank robbers, and at
After the charges were reduced, Nehemiah Luckett, left, spoke outside court, as Reverend Billy, a.k.a. Bill Talen, gestured toward him. Standing between them were their defense attorneys, Wylie Stecklow, left, and Samuel Cohen.
least one of them reported a robbery to police, prompting the cops to arrest Talen and Luckett as they were waiting for the F train. Talen was cast as the “ringleader using
violent tactics,” and the toads, prosecutors claimed, had approached customers with the ominous refrain, “We are coming for you.” But faced with a barrage of incredulous
media coverage, the Manhattan D.A.’s Office sharply reduced the charges at a court hearing on Monday. Assistant D.A. David Bornstein told the judge that after re-interviewing witnesses and reviewing the bank’s surveillance footage, he concluded that the group’s actions were “more in line with what we consider actual protest.” Bornstein dropped the more serious charges and reduced the remaining offenses to Class B misdemeanor criminal trespass, disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly. Talen was offered a plea deal of one day of community service, while Nehemiah was offered an A.C.D. — Adjournment Contemplating Dismissal — meaning that if he does not get arrested again in six months, all charges will be dismissed and the record sealed. That’s a big shift from how the case was presented at their arraignment in October. Then, a prosecutor accused Talen of engaging in a “violent and terrifying masked criminal stunt, which demonstrates his utter disregard for the law.” On Monday, the prosecutor termed the action a “musical presentation.” Defense attorney Wylie Stecklow — who TOAD CASE, continued on p. 29
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December 12, 2013
TheVillager.com