hi john bryan here uh west virginia civil rights lawyer the civil rights lawyer dot com here just today we finally filed the outlaw barber case which is the case of les jenkins his 73 year old retired deputy u.s marshal combat veteran off of a swift boat in vietnam five decade long barber who now lives on a small farm with his wife of 50 plus years and takes care of rescue animals and has his only source of income being his little barber shop that he has in berkeley county west virginia a little town called inwood west virginia and this man was physically arrested back during the lockdown period in april of last year because of the executive order of our tyrannical trash governor arrested by two sheriff's deputies who clearly didn't know what they were doing at the direction of one of these health nazis this woman who is an ex-inspector with the completely useless west virginia board of barbers and cosmetologists so this is one of the actual few people who according to the governor's threat was actually arrested physically arrested and transported for incarceration by law enforcement who were purporting to carry out these tyrannical and unconstitutional orders by our governor now he wasn't arrested for violating the executive order because that's not actually a statute that they could cite he was arrested for the general obstruction statute now the the inspector from the barber's board who started this whole thing her husband is a prosecutor in the same county and she mentions that in the body cam footage if you've seen it and if not you can still watch it now it may be a coincidence but instead of dismissing these ridiculous frivolous charges they instead aggressively prosecuted mr jenkins tried to convict him in fact it happened on april 23rd that he was arrested and charged and he wasn't able to get out from underneath his prosecution until january of 2021 which is extremely unusual for a misdemeanor obstruction charge in west virginia they they tried to prosecute him and get a conviction and ultimately they failed because the courageous magistrate court judge dismissed the criminal prosecution because it violated the constitutional rights of my client so we finally just here today filed a section 1983 civil rights lawsuit and it's up at the website on the civil civilrightslawyer.com you can review it in full and also at the link which i'll put in the description you can also watch the body cam footage from this incident that i put in the that i had already done a video on that caught a lot of what went on there that day but there are three claims that we made so this is a section 1983 lawsuit where you you allege that there have been deprivations of federal rights federal laws by somebody acting under color of law either a government employee police officer health inspector inspector for the barbers board whatever and the rights that were deprivated that's a word fourth amendment and first amendment now primarily this was a fourth amendment case so i've separated the fourth amendment claims into two separate counts so one and you'll have to watch the the video for this but when the officers arrive they just go in his barber shop and kind of confront him i'll tell you specifically what was said i went through all the videos and it's great that we had the videos available um this again this was march uh or april 23rd of 2020. so the two deputies one you know was a male and a female the male was deputy robinson female was deputy weidman again berkeley county sheriff's office eastern panhandle of west virginia they were in uniform and fortunately weidman was wearing a body camera and that's where we got the footage from but let me let me back that up actually before they go in they meet the inspector outside from the barbers board and this is what she says i knocked on his door referring to my client because i'm immune comparable so i'm trying not to be out here my husband just had surgery and i'm trying not to bring anything back to him you know so i knocked on his door asked him to come outside i told him you know that there's a mandate you have to be closed all the other shops are closed so i'm doing my job asking you to close down we don't want you to get the other people sick or anything to happen you know he's like well i wasn't aware of this sure so after this the deputies just walk in and the male robinson walks just they didn't ask for permission to enter or anything like that the door wasn't locked robinson walks up to my client there's no customers in the store and he says you know you have to be shut down right my client responds well referring to the inspector she arrived here at nine o'clock am said she'd received a complaint that he was open for business she said that she had to shut me down and i said i needed her order and writing and to sign it because what happened was is my client initially complied and he shut down until he started to run out of money that was his sole source of income so he goes to a bank to try to get a pbp loan because he has a cash-only business as a barber they wouldn't give him a ppp loan he goes to workforce west virginia which is the unemployment office and they told him that he didn't qualify for unemployment unless he can get some sort of verification and writing that he's been ordered to close down so that's why he's asking this woman to all right put it in writing and sign it you know verify for me in writing so i can get unemployment if you're going to shut me down so that's what he asked for that's what he told the deputies when they arrived that he had asked for so wideman who has the body camera then goes back outside to speak with inspector kinser and asks her if she has a copy of the order that she can provide to mr jenkins and she says no well my office is in charleston and i'm rarely there so i can't provide him with a hard copy so she looks it up on her phone hands the deputy her phone the deputy then goes back inside the barber shop and hands the phone to the other deputy who hands it to my client my client says nope i need it in writing i need it writing and writing and i want her to sign it so eventually the kinser came back with a hard copy of the governor's executive order and um said that she wasn't going to sign it because some unnamed individual told her not to sign it and so my client said well that's still not that's still not sufficient and you know if you're gonna arrest me you're gonna arrest me and so they ended up arresting him and uh he asked if he could lock his the doors to his business you know before he got arrested they allowed him to so they physically arrested him and transported him to the sheriff's office for processing they ended up incarcerating him for about three hours before he posted bond which was a 500 pr bond and again they prosecuted him thereafter for months and months and months and months and months and months finally when his lawyer filed a motion to dismiss and it came up for hearing the judge dismissed it and that wasn't until january now at the same time that they were doing this the barbers board itself was taking administrative action also in addition to the pending criminal case trying to take mr jenkins license and fortunately at some point the attorney general of west virginia stepped in and issued a press release and said this exercising one's right to inquire about the legal nature of an executive order should never result in the revocation of one's license to do business and i commend the board for its ruling and what he's talking about is if you watch the body cam footage mr jenkins is is questioning their authority to close him to close his business and and to uh well basically yeah to close his business he's questioning their authority and he's saying that he's you know has legal counsel that he's going to challenge it you know he may file a lawsuit but he's questioning their authority and that's where the first amendment you'll see is going to come in and the attorney general was right about this so finally they dismissed the administrative complaint at the behest of the attorney general he received a letter in the mail stating that the administrative complaint was dropped but they were still trying to get him on the criminal charge so here's what the the accounts are two counts for violating the fourth amendment one is the actual entry itself and the initial seizure of the investigative detention that took place in the second fourth amendment event is the actual arrest so that's basically false arrest but they're both violations of the fourth amendment now when they first walk in they're wearing uniforms they don't ask for permission to come in they don't have a warrant so i'm alleging here that this was basically an overt show of authority of hey we're law enforcement officers and at that point you know they didn't ask for anything they just said hey you know i confronted him you know you're supposed to be shut down right and that was an overt show of authority as uniformed law enforcement officers and i would contend that the seizure had begun and it was an investigative detention at that point and ultimately they arrested him so that's the first count that's the first you know fourth amendment event and the second count also a fourth amendment violation is the false arrest itself so what did we have there you they arrested him for violation of state obstructing an officer state statute of obstructing an officer that's west virginia code 61-5-17 and that says any person who threats by threats menaces acts or otherwise forcibly or illegally hinders or obstructs or attempts to hinder obstruct any law enforcement officer blah blah blah blah blah is guilty of a misdemeanor blah blah blah blah so that's a state misdemeanor violation and they did not have an arrest warrant so therefore that was a warrantless arrest what do you need to perform a justified warrantless arrest in west virginia or anywhere else well you need probable cause and if there's no probable cause then that is a fourth amendment violation that's a false arrest unreasonable search and seizure whatever you want to call it now another thing in west virginia is because remember states can offer more protections to their citizens they just can't offer less than the federal baseline of of protections under the fourth amendment or any other amendment so west virginia actually requires that if a police officer is going to make a misdemeanor arrest that that arrest has to occur or that violation that offense has to be witnessed by the officer has to has to happen in the officer's presence otherwise they have to go get an arrest warrant and so if they're saying that by cutting hair the day before including he cut some police officers here that that was the criminal activity that he engaged in well that didn't happen in the presence of those officers when they came in there were no customers in there at all and in fact the executive order doesn't say he has to close it just says that he's not allowed to bring in the general public so arguably he can be in there he could he could ship out hair care products via mail or through a slot in the door or he could even cut the hair of emergency so-called emergency or essential workers so i mean it's it you know perhaps that's why they didn't charge him with violation of the executive order which of course isn't a thing they charge him with obstruction so how did the how did he forcibly hinder or or obstruct the officer from from you know his investigation well you know the only thing he didn't do is the officer telling him to close and and he didn't close or theoretically um so if you know if if that's the violation then let's look at the case law on obstruction and really the the funny thing is there was just in 2019 a fourth circuit case that came out of west virginia on obstruction and it really is on point to this and it's the case is called hup versus state trooper seth cook fourth circuit 2019 and it was actually defended by a defense lawyer who's a friend of mine i don't remember him saying anything about this case it's been a while since we've had a case together but this is crazy like on point to this situation here's what the fourth circuit had to say about west virginia obstruction law as west virginia's high court is and i put all this in the lawsuit if you want to check it out as west virginia's high court has succinctly explained to secure a conviction under section 61517a that's obstruction the state must show forcible or legal conduct that interferes with the police officers discharge of official duties because conduct can and blah blah blah but basically here's what it says um when force is not used obstruction lies only where an illegal act is performed this is because lawful conduct is not sufficient to establish the statutory offense and of particular relevance to our inquiry here west virginia courts have held that when done in an orderly manner merely questioning or remonstrating with an officer while he or she is performing his or her duty does not ordinarily constitute the offense of obstructing an officer and they cite state versus snerski 2003 for example a supreme court of appeals is found that no obstruction is committed when a property owner asks a law enforcement officer without the use of fighting or insulting words or other appropriate language with and without forcible or other illegal hindrance to leave her property this principle is based on the first amendment right to question or challenge the authority of a police officer provided that fighting words or other a pro appropriate language is not used so peaceful verbal criticism criticism of an officer who's making an arrest cannot be targeted under a general obstruction of justice statute and as the west virginia attorney general pointed out my client should not be retaliated against for exercising his first amendment right to inquire about the legal nature of an executive order and and what his rights are and questioning those rights he his license shouldn't be attacked and he really shouldn't be physically arrested and incarcerated so that's what mr jenkins was doing if you watch the videos he was questioning the authority of the governor he was asserting his constitutional rights and in response to that he was physically arrested and incarcerated for three hours his business shut down so i've also included here a first amendment claim so these are all section 1983 claims different counts and one lawsuit so it was just filed today and uh i suspect this one you'll you'll you'll see it in the news there was already a federalist article if you have a great article on it and uh you know the failings of the west virginia bureaucratic state it really is educational on on different levels so check all this stuff out and we'll be serving the defendants and there may be even more defendants we'll see what the current defendants have to testify to and uh you know if i'll make sure you follow uh subscribe to civil rights lawyer dot com and uh there definitely will be some updates on this case this will be a fun one so follow along and i will definitely keep you updated on this one [Music] you