Journalist Alexei Wood arrested at Inauguration protest

California-based writer Aaron Cantú and Colorado-based photojournalist Alexei Wood announced on April 25, 2023, that they were awarded $175,000 as part of a settlement agreement in their lawsuit against the District of Columbia and its police department.

Cantú and Wood were two of at least nine journalists arrested while documenting protests in Washington, D.C., around the inauguration of President Donald Trump on Jan. 20, 2017. All of the journalists were charged with felony rioting, and both Cantú and Wood were charged with additional felony counts. Wood was acquitted following a trial that December, and charges against Cantú were dropped in July 2018.

The pair jointly filed a lawsuit against the district and the Metropolitan Police Department in January 2020, seeking damages for arresting them for protected speech and without probable cause, using excessive force and intentionally inflicting emotional distress.

The district agreed to pay Cantú and Wood $175,000 to settle the suit, which the journalists plan to split minus attorneys fees. The settlement agreement included a declaration that the district and police department do not accept any liability for the journalists’ claims.

Two other independent journalists who challenged their inauguration protest arrests with lawsuits — Alex Stokes and Shay Horse — reached settlement agreements in 2021.

In the press release about the settlement, Wood said that he doesn’t believe the district police’s tactics will change following the settlement.

“Although this settlement award is substantial, I have no confidence that the police wouldn’t do it all over again,” Wood said. “With little-to-no oversight or accountability, it’s no surprise the DC police violated their own policy in arresting us.”

Almost exactly three years after Alexei Wood and Aaron Cantú were arrested while covering protests around the inauguration of President Donald Trump, the freelance journalists are suing Washington, D.C., and its police department.

According to DCist, the suit, filed Jan. 16, 2020, seeks damages for arresting them for protected speech and without probable cause, using excessive force and intentionally inflicting emotional distress.

Wood, a photojournalist, told the outlet that the arrests were an injustice used to silence dissent, a point that he can’t let go. “We need to have journalists be able to tell the stories and get to the bottom of things. Otherwise, we live in an utterly ignorant world,” he said.

In a statement published by DCist, independent journalist Cantú wrote that he is still very angry about what happened to him and Wood, and that the lawsuit is a way of holding the D.C. police accountable.

More than 200 people were detained as part of the mass arrests in the nation’s capital, and other lawsuits are underway, including a class action suit and one from the American Civil Liberties Union representing a photojournalist and other defendants.

The Metropolitan Police Department returned equipment belonging to independent photojournalist Alexei Wood more than a year after he was arrested and his equipment seized while he was covering protests on Jan. 20, 2017.

Wood was charged with eight separate felony accounts, and his professional equipment — including a Canon 7D camera body with a 16–35 L lens, at least four memory cards with over 200 GB of photos, a Rode external microphone, a monopod and an Android phone — were seized and searched by police.

Wood told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker at the time that police returned his camera lens, but not the rest of his equipment. Though the charges against him were dropped nearly a year later, in December 2017, the rest of his equipment was not returned to him until Oct. 10, 2018, Wood told the Tracker in November 2021.

The jury returned "not guilty" verdicts for Wood and all other defendants on all charges on Dec. 21, 2017.

On Dec. 13, 2017, Judge Leibovitz ordered that the felony charge of inciting a riot be dropped, because there was no evidence that Wood or the others on trial directed protesters' behavior.

These are the charges that Wood currently faces:

• Five felony counts of destruction of property
• One misdemeanor count of engaging in a riot
• One misdemeanor count of conspiracy to riot

Judge Lynn Leibovitz, who is presiding over the trial, ordered that two of the felony charges — engaging in a riot and conspiracy to riot — be downgraded to misdemeanors on Dec. 1, 2017.

These are the charges that Wood currently faces:

• Five felony counts of destruction of property
• One felony count of incitement to riot
• One misdemeanor count of engaging in a riot
• One misdemeanor count of conspiracy to riot

The criminal trial of Wood and five inauguration protesters began on Nov. 15, 2017, with the start of jury selection.

On Nov. 20, federal prosecutors and attorneys representing Wood and the other defendants made their opening statements to the jury.

Wood tweeted that his trial is scheduled to begin on Nov. 15, 2017.