BOISE, Idaho — This story originally appeared in The Idaho Press.
Five months after being arrested and charged with malicious harassment against a kippah-wearing Jewish man in downtown Boise on the Fourth of July, the felony case against Hannah Tucker has been dropped.
“[The alleged victim’s] testimony, taken as true, does not support an inference establishing probable cause that Mx. Tucker acted with the specific intent to harass him because of his religion,” District Judge Annie McDevitt wrote in a Dec. 16 order of dismissal, four days after the charges were dropped in an oral ruling. “While [the alleged victim] believed Mx. Tucker targeted him because he is Jewish, his belief is not what is pertinent under the statute.”
Mx. is an honorific preferred by many who, like Tucker, use they/them pronouns.
Tucker, 29, and former co-defendant Crystal Grosenbach were chanting slogans like “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “America will fall, Israel will fall” in downtown Boise the evening of July 4, while the Jewish man was eating on a restaurant patio with his wife.
He said at a preliminary hearing Aug. 2 that he considered their keffiyehs — a traditional Arab scarf often worn as a symbol of defiance against Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories — to “say hatred against Jews” and that he feared for his safety due to heightened antisemitism and campus protests since the Israel-Hamas war began last October.
When Tucker and Grosenbach were close enough to be in earshot, he said that he told them their presence was unappreciated and that they should leave, resulting in a verbal argument after which they left around the corner and subsequently returned. Then, he alleged, Tucker shoved a cell phone in his face which struck him on the nose.
The Jewish man stated that “a knot” with mild swelling formed on his nose as a result of the altercation, which Tucker’s defense framed as an accidental response to him “swiping” at the cell phone. After this testimony, Grosenbach’s charge was dismissed.
“After the preliminary hearing, we obtained the transcript, and took a look at that and took a look at the law. Based on what was put on the record, [Tucker’s] case should have never gone beyond the preliminary stage,” the pair’s attorney, Mike French, said. “The [malicious harassment] statute [Idaho Code 18-7902] talks in terms that you target someone because of their protected class. The allegation was that [the alleged victim] was targeted because of his religion. But when you look at the evidence that was on the record, there wasn’t enough.”
The law defines malicious harassment as harassment with intent to injure or damage the property of another person, or to threaten to do so, on the basis of race, color, religion, ancestry or national origin. Cross burnings and the tagging of property with slurs or hate symbols are cited as examples.
French said that Tucker and Grosenbach’s chanting was an act of “protesting to the public at large” and was meant to refer to the Israeli government’s actions, not Judaism. The alleged victim, whose name is known but will not be printed, could not be reached for comment.
In another case, Tucker was arrested July 25 for felony malicious injury to property on allegations of vandalizing a bathroom at a hotel where an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) veteran was staying during a speaking gig. This charge was also dismissed on the motion of the prosecutor Dec. 13, due to a lack of evidence that the graffiti had been created by Tucker.
This story originally appeared in The Idaho Press.
