A woman who shouted and cussed during a Tarrant County Commissioners Court meeting in January was criminally disruptive, a jury ruled Monday.
Carolyn Rodriguez, who goes by Carolina, was arrested at the Tarrant County Commissioners Court meeting on Jan. 28. She signed up to speak during the designated public comment period, and she listed expletives to protest meeting rules that ban swearing. County Judge Tim O’Hare ordered her out. As she left the room, she yelled “[Expletive] you!” and shouted “It’s not against the law!” as she got arrested.
A six-member jury found Rodriguez guilty of hindering proceedings by disorderly conduct, a high-level misdemeanor. The jury is scheduled to decide her sentence Tuesday. That could range from probation to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine.
This case is about free speech, Rodriguez’s attorney Mark Streiff said after the verdict.
"We will continue to fight against the tyranny in Tarrant County, where we have elected officials who just want to suppress people's constitutional rights," he said.
At Rodriguez’s trial on Monday, Tarrant County prosecutor Lloyd Whelchel told the jury the problem was Rodriguez’s conduct, not what she said.
“This case has absolutely nothing to do with free speech,” he said.
Judge Brian Bolton agreed, ruling the charge against Rodriguez did not involve speech issues.
The commissioners court is allowed to set rules for its meetings, and the rules in place at the time were included in the speakers’ packet Rodriguez had to fill out, Whelchel said. Those rules banned swearing and warned that violations of the rules could lead to arrest.
Rodriguez’s shouting disrupted the meeting, which couldn’t continue until she was done, Whelchel said. He called in Chief Deputy Craig Driskell, who is in charge of security in county buildings and ordered Rodriguez’s arrest.
“Before she was even out of court, she was screaming and yelling,” Driskell said during his testimony.
If Rodriguez hadn’t been shouting a swear, but something like “unicorn,” he still would have had her arrested, Driskell said.
Rodriguez’s defense disagreed. This is “just a case about cussing,” Rodriguez’s attorney James T. Chiles said, arguing the state is making a big deal out of nothing.
“There was absolutely no delay between her and the next speaker,” he said.
Rodriguez had stopped shouting by the time the next speaker arrived at the podium and started talking, Chiles said.
Rodriguez is already familiar to law enforcement. She’s a cop watcher who films interactions with police for her YouTube channel, Carolina in Fort Worth, which has almost 100,000 subscribers.
Prosecutors tried to show the jury she went to commissioners court on Jan. 28 to get views. Her channel is the first thing she mentions in her public comment, Whelchel said.
“She wants sensationalism, ’cause that’s who she is,” he said.
Bolton allowed Whelchel to show the jury a video that got Rodriguez convicted of a misdemeanor computer security breach in 2019. She filmed herself walking into an apparently empty county facilities building, sat down at a computer, pulled up one of her YouTube videos and left a note that said “Carolina in Ft. Worth was here.”
Rodriguez’s defense team argued that wanting likes — and her actions at the January meeting — are not crimes.
They called in Democratic County Commissioner Alisa Simmons, who testified the meeting went on without delay after Rodriguez cussed and shouted.
The prosecution tried to stop witnesses from giving opinions about whether Rodriguez’s arrest violated free speech, but it still came up during Simmons’ testimony. Simmons said she believed the past and current rules of decorum limit people’s speech.
Whelchel asked her how she knows profanity is protected speech.
“Just like I know a tree is green,” she said. “I didn’t have to be an arborist to know that.”
Simmons is not a lawyer. Whelchel asked her what law school she went to and which cases she based her conclusions on.
“You have a hot sports opinion about it, but you really don’t know the law,” he said.
Simmons listened to county attorney Mark Kratovil, she said. At the meeting, she asked Kratovil if profanity is protected speech. He expressed hesitance to give legal advice in public — that usually happens behind closed doors — but after advising commissioners to follow the decorum policy, he answered.
“I can give you an answer to that question. Yes, it’s dependent on the facts of what’s occurred, yes,” he said.
The defense team also tried to compel Republican County Judge Tim O’Hare to testify. O’Hare has the power to enforce the rules at commissioners court, and he was the one who ordered Rodriguez out for swearing.
The prosecution asked the judge to throw out that subpoena because the alleged crime is on tape, making his testimony unnecessary. Bolton sided with the prosecution.
Simmons and O’Hare are vocal adversaries. In recent months, O’Hare, a Republican, led a redistricting effort that reshaped the commissioners court precinct map. The new map packs Simmons’ Precinct 2 with Republicans, making it harder for her to win reelection next year. O’Hare has said he wasn’t targeting Simmons, but that it’s always been his goal to add another Republican to the court’s existing majority.
Whelchel wanted to show the jury Simmons is biased against O’Hare by showing them a picture of her flipping the bird in O’Hare’s direction at a recent commissioners court meeting. Rodriguez’s attorney Mark Streiff objected.
“This isn’t a trial about redistricting,” he said.
The judge agreed to withhold the photo. Simmons said she was not flipping off O’Hare, but the redistricting process in general.
Rodriguez’s lawyers also tried to show the punishments for swearing were not doled out evenly. CJ Grisham, an attorney and gun rights activist based in Temple, spoke at Tarrant County Commissioners Court on Jan. 28 to talk about his friend Mason Yancy, who died in Tarrant County custody in December.
Grisham cussed and got thrown out. Video of the incident shows him asking deputies to let him get his personal items and shouting that profanity is protected speech when Simmons asked about it from the dais. But he was allowed to leave, unlike Rodriguez, Streiff said.
“No arrest there,” Streiff said. “No hindrance.”
Charles Hermes was arrested at the Jan. 28 meeting, before Rodriguez. He clapped for a speaker after O’Hare warned him not to do it. He faces the same charge, hindering proceedings by disorderly conduct, and his trial date has not been set, according to county records.
Got a tip? Email Miranda Suarez at msuarez@kera.org.
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