Clarinetist Oriana Korol testified Wednesday that she never kicked or bit a federal officer after he and others chased a man into the Unpresidented Brass Band as the group played across the street from Portland’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building last fall.
The officer in question said Korol escalated the October confrontation and assaulted him after she fell to the ground and while he held her trying to handcuff her.
The case marks only the second time someone arrested on federal charges related to the recent ICE protests since June has gone to trial.
The 12-member jury deliberated for almost three hours Wednesday afternoon before going home and is scheduled to continue Thursday morning.
Korol has pleaded not guilty to one count of assaulting a federal officer, a felony. The jurors must determine whether she intentionally struck the officer or willfully injured him.
Her attorney, Bear Wilner-Nugent, argued that the Federal Protective Service inspector used force against Korol and that “any incidental bodily conduct was part of self-protective actions she had taken.”
“Don’t let the federal government fool you and turn this case around,” he told jurors in his closing argument.
Prosecutors provided a starkly different account, arguing over the two-day trial that the officer, Carlos Perez, was trying to prevent Korol from interfering with the arrest of the man who had run into the band and Korol got angry.
“In the middle of that chaos, she crossed a line,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Katherine A. Rykken told jurors.
“You can’t bite and kick an officer just because you’re mad,” Rykker said.
The Oct. 12 encounter came shortly after at least a dozen federal officers emerged from the ICE building driveway and started to push protesters out of the way as a line of federal SUVs drove out of the property about 5 p.m. Moments earlier, the Emergency World Naked Bike Ride had snaked past the crowd on South Bancroft Street.
As the band was playing its last song, the theme from “Ghostbusters,” several federal officers raced after a man, later identified as Marcus Martinez, and tackled him in the midst of the band members.
Korol was on the edge of the scrum and first picked up a set of drums that the band’s drummer dropped as he was knocked backward and sustained a bloody lip. She said she then went to check on Martinez, who she didn’t know at the time.
Korol, a 38-year-old clinical family therapist who lives in Portland, said she joined the protest band a month earlier and wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.
After she helped the drummer, she said she went into “triage mode,” drawing on her training as a wilderness first-responder to check if anyone was injured.
She said she walked closer to the man who was tackled by officers.
“It looked like the officer was choking Marcus Martinez,” she said. “I wanted to witness and see what happened.”
Prosecutors played several clips of videos for jurors and pointed to screenshots that they said showed Korol’s hand reaching in and touching Perez’s arm and the ballistic vest of an officer who was on top of Martinez.
Perez testified that Korol “had thrown herself” in front of Martinez, who was lying on the ground with another officer on top of him.
Perez moved Korol back beside a chainlink fence and put his finger up to Korol’s face and said he ordered her to stay back or she would face arrest.
Moments later, he said Korol was knocked to the ground, landing on her back.
Perez testified that Korol then kicked him in the knee with her right leg.
Prosecutors played video to show that Korol “reared back” her right leg and sprung it forward to kick Perez as she lay on the ground, saying that justified her arrest.
“That’s an intentional strike on officer Perez,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew T. Ho.
After the kick, Perez said he moved to arrest Korol and got on top of her, he said.
With Korol’s arms tucked underneath her, Perez said he put his left arm under her head as she lay face down and signaled with his right hand for another officer to help handcuff her.
A moment later, he said she turned her head and he felt her teeth on his left forearm, causing him to quickly pull his arm away.
“She became what we call an active aggressor,” he said. Perez added, though, that he wasn’t injured.
Another officer called by prosecutors to testify, ICE officer Jediah Duncan, said he never saw Korol kick Perez or bite him.
Korol’s lawyer, in turn, had jurors examine video that appeared to show Perez grab Korol’s right shoulder at one point and push her, sending her tumbling onto the officer who was on top of Martinez beside a large mud puddle.
“The officer pushed me and I fell on top of Marcus,” Korol said. “I didn’t want to fall down so I tried to stand up because I saw how dangerous it was to be on the ground. …It felt like he kept pushing me into where the arrest was happening.”
Asked if she tried to get officers off Martinez or separate him from the officers, Korol said no.
While Korol saw Perez point his finger in her face on the video, she testified that at the time she had no idea what he was telling her because he was wearing a gas mask.
“I was trying not to fall. I was being jostled by people behind me and at points, jostled by the officer in front of me,” she said.
Korol got back up and then said Perez knocked her backward, causing her to fall onto her back as she tried to hold onto her clarinet in one hand. She grasped the top of her clarinet but lost the bottom half in the struggle.
She said she was moving her legs to try to get up and couldn’t see because officers had squirted her in the face twice with pepper spray. She said she moved her legs to try to turn over and stand up and never kicked Perez.
Perez then got on top of her as she rolled onto her stomach, with her face down. “I felt arms reach under me and press against my throat. It was scary because I had just seen someone getting choked,” Korol said.
Wearing a gray ski mask that covered most of her face, Korol tried to move it away from her mouth so she could breathe more easily because she suffers from asthma, she said.
She grabbed Perez’s arm briefly as she tried to do that, she testified.
“I never put my mouth on his arm. I never opened my mouth,” Korol said. Her teeth never came in contact with his arm, she said.
On cross-examination, Rykken asked Korol, “Was this mask designed to hide your identity?”
Korol said she did not want her clients to know her political affiliation.
As officers tackled Martinez and later struggled to handcuff Korol, some people in the crowd repeatedly yelled at the officers, “Cowards!” and “Shame on you!”
Martinez, the man chased into the band and tackled, testified briefly at trial, saying he came to the protest to advocate for the oppressed.
The 36-year-old said he works as an assistant branch manager of a regional credit union. He was arrested and held for about 26 hours and then released.
Prosecutors, he said, dropped the assault charge against him.
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