Prosecutors will not offer plea bargains to more than a dozen people cited with misdemeanors after allegedly blocking traffic on Interstate 25 during a protest in June.

An El Paso County prosecutor confirmed during a brief Tuesday hearing for one of the protesters that the district attorney’s office wouldn’t consider cutting deals for lesser convictions. But she said the policy applied only to those who had blocked interstate traffic, not to people cited during the street demonstrations that erupted in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis.

“This is the offer for all of the cases dealing with the highway obstruction due to the dangerous nature of obstructing a highway,” prosecutor Natalie Lewis said.  

A defense attorney said the decision was retaliation for protesters calling out “racist” policies in the local prosecutor’s office.

“I think this is coming from Dan May, and I think this is unconstitutional,” Josh Tolini said Tuesday at the hearing for his client in El Paso County Court, adding that May, the Pikes Peak region’s term-limited district attorney, was trying to “squash free speech.”

May’s office said Tolini’s comments sought to “obfuscate the real issue.”

“This case is not about people’s right to protest, nor is it about the Black Lives Matter Movement,” the office said in a written statement. “It is about anyone who chooses to shut down a public freeway, thus endangering the innocent lives of any person who unknowingly drove on that area of the freeway that evening.”

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The dispute offered a preview of Tolini’s trial strategy should the case against his client, a 27-year-old woman with no prior criminal history, proceed to a jury. Magistrate Denise Peacock postponed a pretrial hearing until Feb. 8, saying she wanted to give the woman the chance to see if Michael Allen, the district attorney-elect, adopts a different stance. Allen takes office in early January.

Eighteen people were ticketed for obstructing traffic, a misdemeanor, after driving onto the interstate June 30 and getting out of their cars, tying up traffic for about a half hour, police said. The group, whose members rode in roughly a dozen cars, stopped in the middle of the northbound lanes near the Bijou Street exit to protest racial injustice, while chanting “No justice, no peace.”

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Police tracked down many of those present through social media posts, license plates on vehicles at the scene and tips from the public, Tolini said.

If convicted, the protesters face up to six months in jail plus a possible fine of up to $350.  

Dozens of other protesters were cited by police during similar protests in the days after Floyd’s death, mostly on suspicion of obstructing police, also a misdemeanor.