The Denver City Attorney’s office over the past several weeks has been quietly dropping cases against pro-Palestinian protesters arrested last spring on the Auraria campus, The Denver Gazette has learned.

The case involving Paul Nelson, a non-traditional student at Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU), was among those dismissed.

While grateful his trespass and interference charges were dismissed, Nelson said he is also angry that he has had to disclose his pending case as he applied for jobs and housing.

“This is something that’s been hanging over my head that brands me a criminal,” said Nelson, 26.

Nelson’s attorney, Andy McNulty, said the heavy-handed move to arrest students is antithetical to the notion that higher education is a tool for transformative societal change.

“All the students learned is that when you speak out for injustice, the government comes for you and crushes you the best way that they can,” said McNulty, a civil rights attorney in Denver.

The dismissals follow a discovery violation last month by the City Attorney’s Office, which failed to provide defendants hours of body camera footage.

McNulty said he received only “snippets” of police body cam footage that totaled about 40 hours. But the city attorney’s office, McNulty said, had more than 200 files he should have received during the discovery process.

Discovery is the process in a criminal proceeding in which both the prosecution and the defense gather and share evidence before trial to ensure all parties can prepare their cases.

Melissa Sisneros, a spokesperson for Denver City Attorney Kerry C. Tipper, declined to comment.

It’s unclear how many cases have been dropped.

When prosecutors make a discovery violation it can undermine trust and harm the integrity of the criminal justice process, defense attorneys say. By preventing the defense from fully understanding the prosecution’s case, discovery violations can also lead to wrongful convictions.

“It’s truly like a movie,” McNulty said of the discovery violations. “It should not happen in real life. That’s not how it’s supposed to work in our criminal justice system.”

The prosecution is supposed to provide discovery within 20 days of filing, often at the entry of appearance, said Chris Carraway, an attorney representing an MSU professor whose case was dropped.

Carraway said the City Attorney’s Office had 900 gigabytes of information they were compelled to share with defense attorneys.

If 1 gigabyte of data can hold about an hour of footage, that means law enforcement had gathered about 900 hours of video.

In at least one case, Carraway said, prosecutors provided no surveillance footage showing the quad.

McNulty and Carraway called the discovery violation “maleficence.”

“I think it’s grossly negligent,” Carraway said.

While McNulty said it was “difficult to read the tea leaves,” Carraway had a more pointed take on the case dismissals.

“In and of itself this is offensive,” Carraway said. “All these cases are the same. If they can’t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt for one person, they can’t prove it for any.”

Carraway added: “I think this is somewhat damage control.”

In April, police dismantled dozens of tents and arrested more than 40 protesters — many of them college students — on the Auraria campus. Tents emerged on campuses across the U.S. in protest against Israel’s response to the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks. Hamas killed 1,200 and kidnapped roughly 250 people.

Protesters chanted: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

The river is the Jordan and the sea is the Mediterranean, between which lie Israel and the Palestinian territories. Palestinian activists say it’s a call for peace and equality after 75 years of Israeli statehood and decades-long Israeli military rule over millions of Palestinians.

Jews hear a clear demand for Israel’s annihilation.

Student protesters also made several demands of university officials, including that they divest from corporations that operate in Israel.

The Auraria campus is shared by the Community College of Denver, MSU and the University of Colorado Denver, which has a combined enrollment of about 34,000 students.

Damages for the pro-Palestinian protests has cost the institution about $668,934, university officials report.

In addition to destroying the sod, vandalism, trash in the quad and a hazmat team cleaning a spill from an illegal toilet, those expenses included costs for marketing and IT services.

Students at the University of Denver also set up an encampment in protest, but it was voluntarily dismantled without calling in law enforcement.