Last week, a five-man, seven-woman Cole County jury deliberated about 3 hours before convicting 22 pastors and religious leaders from around Missouri of trespassing in the state Senate's Upper Gallery, after they didn't leave immediately when told to do so by Capitol Police on May 6, 2014.
Jurors recommended no jail time for any in the group and said they should be fined at an amount to be determined by Circuit Judge Dan Green.
Prosecutor Mark Richardson had charged 23 religious leaders with trespassing and obstructing a government operation for disrupting the Senate during the May 2014 protest.
But the jury cleared 22 members of the group of that charge.
The Rev. Jessie Fisher, of Gladstone, didn't get to Jefferson City last Monday in time for jury selection, so his case was separated from the others, and he could be tried later.
State Rep. Jay Barnes, R-Jefferson City and one of the three lawyers defending the religious leaders in the case, told reporters Thursday afternoon: "I have not heard from a single representative or a single senator who believed it was appropriate for the prosecutor to bring these charges.
"And, for him to stand in the courtroom and pretend that he is the 'Caped Crusader' in defending the Capitol is a complete utter farce."
Richardson declined to comment about last week's trial and the jury's decisions, citing Fisher's pending trial.
But as he was making his closing arguments to the jury Wednesday, asking them for convictions on both the trespassing and obstructing government operations charges, Richardson urged jurors to send a message to future protesters.
"We hear from every person at the Capitol that's elected - and every citizen - through an orderly process," Richardson said. "Those who obstruct and those who trespass need to be held accountable by a jury."
The May 2014 protests quickly made it difficult for senators to hear each other, and then-Majority Leader Ron Richard, R-Joplin, moved for a recess until the gallery was cleared, the News Tribune reported then.
The break lasted nearly an hour.
Then-Senate President Pro Tem Tom Dempsey, R-St. Charles, told reporters after the demonstration: "We deal with very serious and sometimes contentious issues which stir people's passions in the chamber and outside the chamber.
"At the end of the day, I don't think that disrupting the Senate is a good tactic."
During his closing arguments last week, Richardson wondered how many other groups might launch their own protests and disrupt the Senate's proceedings if the jury didn't convict.
"How much time in the Senate will our senators have to get their work done?" the prosecutor asked.
Defense attorney Rod Chapel told reporters Thursday: "This tough-on-crime stand, that we've got to hammer down on traditional American values, is ridiculous.
"It's just not right.
"There's no need for us to impose a stiff sentence, to prosecute people talking about their First Amendment rights."
During the trial and again during his closing argument, Richardson urged jurors to consider the interruption state Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, D-St. Louis, experienced when the protest began.
But Nasheed objected in a news release she issued Thursday afternoon.
"I not only resent the prosecutor wasting taxpayer dollars pressing these mean-spirited and racially tinged charges," Nasheed said in her statement, "I resent and am disgusted by the manner in which he tried to use me in presenting his case.
"For him to characterize me as a victim of the protest not only is cynically untrue, it distracts from the true victims I was fighting for on the floor of the Senate at the moment of the protest - the thousands of Missourians deprived of basic health care because the Republican-controlled General Assembly refuses to expand Medicaid."
In 2010, when Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, one of its provisions expanded Medicaid coverage for most low-income adults to 138 percent of the federal poverty level - a change that it's estimated would benefit about 300,000 Missourians who right now don't qualify for the program that operates with a combination of state and federal dollars.
But the Missouri Legislature's Republican leaders have opposed the idea from the beginning, worrying the expansion eventually would cost more money than the state has.
On that May morning in 2014, more than 100 people carried their protest supporting Medicaid expansion from a rally in the Capitol Rotunda to the state Senate's fourth floor visitor's gallery where they began chanting "Expand Medicaid!"
When Capitol Police ordered them to leave the gallery, some chanted: "We will not go! We will not be quiet!"
In his closing arguments, Richardson reminded the jury: "One of the great things about our Capitol is that we can take our children in there and we can take our grandchildren in there to see how our bills get passed and they can see that anybody who is elected by their fellow citizens.
"Would you rather be able to sit in the Senate gallery and hear debate, versus sitting in the Senate gallery and being run out by protesters violating the law."
That argument didn't sit well with Barnes.
"I don't know of a single elected official in the state Capitol - who actually works there every day - who believes the nonsense that came out of the prosecutor's mouth in this case," the state representative told reporters Thursday.
"I bring my children to the Capitol all the time, and I don't want them to see people getting arrested for exercising their civil rights."
Nasheed's statement urged the protesters to keep fighting for Medicaid expansion.
Chapel said: "I think everybody will be back this coming year."