VIDEO: Will Walters goes Five Years without Justice
Will Walters (PHOTO: James Freeman)
Nearly five years after the fateful day that shook the earth beneath him, Will Walters will have his day in court -- well, sort of. At least his appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a lower court's dismissal will be heard this Friday in Pasadena.
Walters, now 34, has continues to stand tall since his right to equal protection under the law was trounced on by police and ridiculed by some in the media. Some editors minimized the gravity of his civil rights lawsuit against the San Diego Police Department by subjugating news of it under banners such as "news of the weird."
Yet Walters persevered even after a conservative federal judge in San Diego dismissed his case, ignoring the overwhelming evidence that officers discriminatorily singled him out as a gay man at an LGBT event. They arrested him for violating an absurdly ambiguous dress code even then-Lt. David Nisleit (now an SDPD captain) struggled to define in deposition and admitted under oath was specifically different from standards applied at non-gay locales and events.
Several prominent equality-minded attorneys, not least among them former West Hollywood mayor, John Duran, as well as activists and prominent political commentators have gone on the record siding with Walters' contention that his arrest for nudity -- by no stretch of the imagination was he anywhere near nude, says he, his attorney and innumerable others -- was meant as retribution against a gay community who had become too comfortable in assuming they would be treated equally by police.
There was no guarantee the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals would even decide to hear his appeal to overturn the lower court's dismissal. Many cases are simply affirmed, letting stand lower courts' rulings. Last Friday during my interview with Walters, whose media strategy I'm proud to head up, expressed heartfelt gratitude that the higher court agreed his appeal deserved a hearing.
This Friday in Pasadena a panel of three appellate judges of the 9th Circuit will hear Walters' argument why his case should be allowed to go to trial back in San Diego. If they agree to send his case back to a U.S. District Court there, jurors will not only hear testimony about the events surrounding Walters' unconstitutional arrest, they will likely also learn of his subsequent medical diagnosis of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and an array of new, unwanted behaviors Walters has taken on as a result of his arrest.
"I have more understanding about how people are adversely affected by PTSD than I did before," says Walters, who marched with protesters in Ferguson, Mo. in 2014, representing the nonprofit civil-rights education organization, called FreeWillUSA, which he formed after his arrest.
"I stand with veterans, as well as victims of police misconduct and domestic abuse suffering from PTSD," he says. "It's syndrome I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy."
I was moved by this young man's story and reported news about what happened to him at Pride in 2011 long before I agreed to help his attorney in the media because I understood it was more than a story about a leather kilt. Visit FreeWillUSA.com for information about attending Friday's 9th Circuit hearing.
WATCH this new video of Will Walters and his attorney, Chris Morris explain why this case matters to anyone who cares about equality: