Thirteen members of the "Medicaid 23" returned to the scene of their "crimes" Tuesday, just over four years after their arrests made national news.
This time, when they arrived in the Missouri Senate, state Sen. Kiki Curls, D-Kansas City, read a statement from the 23 in commemoration of their calls for justice and Medicaid expansion.
"Today, we have returned to claim the Senate Gallery as a sacred space for silent prayers for justice," Curls read. "Our prayers are prayers of lament for the wounds of our people and the social trauma resulting from the Senate's deplorable and unjust inaction on Medicaid expansion."
Demonstrators say Missourians are becoming more ill and dying younger because of the Senate's inaction, just as they predicted four years ago.
After being rebuffed for years, more than 300 demonstrators, led by clergy, descended on the state Senate to urge lawmakers to expand Medicaid assistance to poor Missourians in 2014. Police arrested 23 of the protesters May 6 of that year after senators stopped a debate because the protesters in the Senate Chamber's upper gallery sang, prayed and chanted loud enough to make it difficult for lawmakers to hear each other on the Senate floor.
They later were released, but a few months later they received notification Cole County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Richardson was charging them with trespassing and obstructing government operations, both misdemeanors. Richardson wanted each of them to spend five days in jail on each charge, said Rod Chapel, one of the attorneys who represented them. Another was state Rep. Jay Barnes, R-Jefferson City.
Speaking to members of the group who marched to the Senate on Tuesday, Chapel said he didn't know of anybody who had gone to jail on a first offense of trespassing or of obstruction. Also, he said, the obstruction charge didn't apply to praying, chanting and singing. It's usually used, he said, when somebody - for example - blocks access to their property with a tractor to prevent a sheriff from entering to seize their property.
In another unusual move, the defendants were tried as a single group, not individually.
"It's the only case I've dealt with where there was a class of defendants, a mass of defendants - all of them lumped together for the purpose of a trial," Chapel said. "It took years for the case to wind its way through the criminal process. It's a case that was marred by some of the poorest conduct I've seen."
A Cole County jury convicted the defendants in 2016 of only trespassing. Before they could appeal, then-Gov. Jay Nixon offered them pardons. Some accepted the pardons. For those who didn't accept the pardons, the verdict was thrown out.
"Nobody spent a day in jail. Nobody paid a fine," Chapel said.
Many of the 23 gathered in First Baptist Church on East Capitol Avenue early Tuesday morning before marching to the Capitol for the commemoration.
The theme for the event, "Bending Our Arc Toward Justice: Returning to the Scene of the Crime," the Rev. John Bennett said, reflects the Senate's injustice for refusing to accept expansion of Medicaid, which resulted in social trauma.
Bennett, a retired pastor who served for a time in Jefferson City and was one of those charged in the demonstration, said the group would march to the Capitol regardless of whether their statement would be heard.
Chapel said that after he was invited to speak for Tuesday's rally, he began reflecting on the trial that connected them all.
"There was something that was just so beautiful," Chapel said. "Your fates were hanging in the balance, and your thoughts were still on the poor folks who were still dying because Medicaid hadn't been expanded. And your hearts and your minds were on God."
Chapel said their story struck a chord with "a couple of old lawyers."
The attorneys always believed they were doing the right thing - fighting the right fight, Chapel said. The idea the Legislature would go as far as to ignore calls coming from the clergy was bad enough, he said, but getting there to have someone - a prosecutor - persecute them was a lesson for lots of Missouri folks.
"We have to continue to lead the charge," Chapel said. "And I'm so glad that you're doing it today."
Their demonstration and their arrest is now part of a public record everyone can learn from, he added.
"But if you don't continue to lend your voices," Chapel said, "the needs of the many will not be heard."