Montana attorney Brian Kahn gave 20 judges legal documents from the case, including the 2005 three-judge unanimous decision overturning the Five’s conviction and the facts of the Miami journalists who received U.S. government pay during the trial.

While New York Mayor Bill de Blasio publicly expresses sympathy with protesters over Eric Garner’s death, the city’s Law Department is seeking new authority to make mass arrests at protests.

But the current approach that D.C. police take toward protests did not come about on its own. Instead, the more relaxed attitude is the result of investigations and litigation that came about after the Metropolitan Police Department employed a heavy-handed approach to various protests in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Ramsey, now Philadelphia’s police commissioner, led D.C. police in the early 2000s when officers inappropriately swept up protesters and bystanders en masse — actions that cost the city more than $20 million in legal settlements.

Philadelphia Police Chief Charles Ramsey, one of two co-chairs appointed by President Obama to head a commission on ways to demilitarize local police, is known for leading repeated bloody and abusive crackdowns on protesters.

“We were just dumbfounded when we heard they had chosen Chief Ramsey,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund