EDMONDS MAN PLEADS GUILTY IN OBAMA-AS-HITLER POSTER SCUFFLE
Seattle Times
ews/2010986711_gasparian5m.html
Feb 5 2010
WA
An Edmonds man who was charged with assault and jailed after he
confronted two supporters of Lyndon LaRouche over their Obama-as-Hitler
poster in September, pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct on Wednesday.
By Lynn Thompson Seattle Times Snohomish County reporter
DEAN RUTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Henry Gasparian said he still believed he had ‘done right.’
An Edmonds man who was charged with assault and jailed after he
confronted two supporters of Lyndon LaRouche over their Obama-as-Hitler
poster in September, pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct on Wednesday.
Henry Gasparian, 71, who witnessed the horrors of Nazi Germany’s
invasion of the Soviet Union as a child, and lost a brother and
two uncles to the war, agreed to a deferred sentence in Edmonds
Municipal Court.
Under the terms of the plea agreement, the case will be dismissed
after one year if Gasparian has no further criminal charges, said
his lawyer Mike Noah, of Puyallup. Noah volunteered to represent
Gasparian after reading an account of his arrest in The Seattle Times.
Gasparian also agreed to pay a $400 fine.
His arrest coincided with the increasingly polarized national debate
over health care and attracted widespread media attention and debate
over the civility of public discourse and the limits of free speech.
An Armenian immigrant and retired salesman, Gasparian appeared on
many radio and TV news broadcasts and said he received letters of
support from around the world.
He said he was deeply offended by the association of Obama with
Hitler when he approached two Lyndon LaRouche campaign workers
at the Edmonds Farmers Market and tried to grab their political
literature. The two activists said he grabbed one of their wrists
and pushed them repeatedly.
In accepting the plea agreement, Edmonds Municipal Court Judge
Douglas Fair told Gasparian that while the Hitler image may have
been upsetting, the U.S. Constitution protects even objectionable
political speech.
After the court hearing, Gasparian said he still believed he had
"done right" in challenging the two LaRouche supporters but was
persuaded that a jury could find him guilty of two counts of assault,
the original charges against him.
He said he also did not want to raise the memories of his parents, who
withstood the hardships of the Nazi occupation, or of the relatives
who had died, before a jury of strangers "who might not care who
Hitler was."
"I think I did the right thing, but maybe I should not have been so
physical," Gasparian said.