"Being a street medic is not simply a free pass," Assistant City Attorney Steve Christie said in his opening statement at McCoy's trial.
But McCoy's public defender told a Ramsey County jury that his case is all about guilt by association and the "illegitimacy of mass arrests."
The police response to the protests was a large operation at tremendous expense, said defense attorney Christopher Champagne. Now the city faces "the necessity of having something to show for it."
Both sides presented opening statements Wednesday in McCoy's trial on misdemeanor charges of unlawful assembly, public assembly without a permit, obstructing traffic and fleeing a police officer. He took part in protests Sept. 1, the convention's first day.
McCoy's case is one of the first from the RNC to come to trial in Ramsey County.
During a previous case, a judge threw out charges against seven defendants after the trial was under way. Other defendants have pleaded guilty or paid a fine. And two defendants arrested Sept. 1 were on trial in another courtroom Wednesday.
McCoy, 33, may benefit from his status as a medic. The jury will see him in a video leading a person in a wheelchair out of a protest area after the person was pepper-sprayed, his attorney said before trial.
At this point, the city is pursuing only a portion of the defendants who were arrested during the four-day convention.
As of Feb. 20, the city attorney's office said it had reviewed 672 cases for prosecution. Of those, 490 cases had been declined or dismissed.
City Attorney John Choi has said that prosecuting the cases was made more difficult because the mass arrests make it hard to pin specific behavior on specific individuals — and some people tried to conceal their identities.
Many residents were outraged, saying that downtown St. Paul looked like a police state during the convention and that the show of force was excessive.
Champagne tried to raise the issue of the many dismissed cases during the testimony of a police commander, but Judge Edward Wilson told him, "Move on from that."
Christie said during his opening statement that there were lawful protests during the convention but that many people "had other ideas."
He talked of the RNC Welcoming Committee, an anarchist group who encouraged protesters to "swarm, seize and stay," Christie said.
"What's their objective? To crash the RNC and to disrupt the RNC," he said.
He said McCoy chose to stick around until the protest got ugly near Seventh and Jackson streets in Lowertown. The police found rocks in his pockets — presumably to throw at the officers — and "when the police caught up with him, he said, 'Oh, s—-.' "
Champagne said the rocks were sentimental stones McCoy had collected in his travels around the country.
In a surprising piece of testimony, the city paused a video of protest activity at a scene that showed a police officer pepper-spraying a protester who was being held on the ground by other officers.
"Is that someone on the ground?" prosecutor Christie asked St. Paul police Senior Cmdr. Joseph Neuberger, who was in charge of the RNC field forces.
"Yes," Neuberger said.
"And yet the officer is spraying immediately into his face — just inches away. Does that strike you as a reasonable use?"
"No, sir," Neuberger said. "That's an inappropriate use."
The video also showed officers spraying liberal gusts of pepper spray from red canisters. Neuberger told the jury that, while pepper-spray may be irritating, it can help protect safety by encouraging people to disperse.
"Ultimately, the goal is to move the crowd rather than injure them," he said.
McCoy appears briefly in the video. He can be seen crossing a street at Seventh and Jackson.
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