CHICAGO (AP) – A federal judge in Chicago has tossed the conviction of a man for chaining his bike to the railing on a handicap ramp outside a veterans’ hospital.
The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin reports a magistrate judge last year found Pedro Donaldson guilty of violating a U.S. law that prohibits “unreasonable” obstructions of entryways at VA facilities. He was sentenced to 30 days of unsupervised probation.
But U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis said in a ruling last week that the facts don’t support findings that the obstruction was “unreasonable.” The bike wasn’t on the ramp but on the grass with a chain around the railing and the handlebars just hanging over the ramp.
Ellis said she would have upheld the conviction had the bike itself been on the ramp.
