Activist sentenced to three months for disrupting Shasta County board meeting, released with ankle monitor
Jenny O’Connell-Nowain was recently convicted for meeting disruption after a peaceful protest at the county boardroom. Today, a visiting Shasta County judge sentenced her to three months in jail. She’s already been released on house arrest, with an ankle monitor.
Today in court, defense attorney Michael Borges asked a Shasta County judge to consider giving his client, Jenny O’Connell-Nowain, something less than the maximum allowable jail term for her crime of disrupting a public meeting.
Under the law, O’Connell-Nowain could have been sentenced to up to six months, a term Judge Thomas L. Bender, a visiting judge from Madeira County, seemed likely to hand down during her last hearing two weeks ago. The judge reconsidered that sentence today after Borges noted that O’Connell-Nowain has no criminal history.
The local woman was convicted by a jury last month. In November 2024, she approached supervisors during a county board meeting and briefly interrupted statements by Patrick Jones, a former supervisor. When told to sit down, O’Connell-Nowain sat on the floor, holding up a political sign. She was arrested soon after in a darkened chamber after board Chair Kevin Crye had cleared the room.
Today, Bender sentenced O’Connell-Nowain to 90 days incarceration. She was taken into custody in the courtroom for transfer to the Shasta County Jail. There, O’Connell-Nowain said she was processed at the main jail before being transferred to another building for alternative custody processing. She was then given an ankle monitor, she said, and told not to leave her house for any reason until March 6 when she should return to have her monitor removed.
She spoke to Shasta Scout by phone around 6 p.m. saying she was not informed why the change to alternative custody had occurred. She said she’s still adjusting to the change in plans after preparing for a months-long sentence, but laughed as she wagered that she’ll be doing lots of dishes and laundry over the next few months.
Shasta Scout is pending a response from the Shasta County Sheriff in regards to her custody changes.
Here’s what happened in court today
Judge Bender seemed to have forgotten key details of the case during his conversation with defense attorney Borges today, asking for a reminder on what O’Connell-Nowain had done in November 2024, and what her intentions were.
Borges explained that his client was speaking up on behalf of a county employee who was being publicly dressed down by the supervisor during the meeting and was not present to defend herself. He was referring to Joanna Francescut, who was at the time the county’s assistant registrar of voters and is now running to become the county’s chief election official.
The judge asked if O’Connell-Nowain had tried other means of communicating her concerns, including public comment, to which Borges attested that she gives public comment almost every week at the county board meetings.
“So what was she trying to achieve?” the judge asked. Borges responded that she wanted to be sure that Jones’ comments about Francescut that day did not go unopposed, explaining that her sign had read, “Jones sits on a throne of lies.”
From her seat next to Borges at the bench, O’Connell-Nowain flashed a brief grin.
Borges continued to explain to the judge that his client’s belief is that her speech that day was protected First Amendment speech, prompting the judge to ask Borges if he agreed with his client.
“If the court is asking for my personal opinion,” Borges said, “yes, I do.”
Borges added that while the county board is allowed to have rules regarding conduct, they must be enforced equally regardless of viewpoint, something he doesn’t believe has happened in the past. Without equal enforcement, Borges said, county board chamber rules could be used to discriminate against viewpoints, something the First Amendment does not allow.
Judge Bender responded by asking prosecutor Emily Mees what her thoughts were on sentencing.
Mees said that O’Connell-Nowain hadn’t taken responsibility for her actions and seemed unrepentant for, in her words, “stopping the meeting cold.” Recounting O’Connell-Nowain’s remarks after her conviction about being willing to face arrest again, Mees said, “that doesn’t inspire trust that she will follow the rules.”
At her last hearing, O’Connell-Nowain was offered probation in lieu of jail time but refused to accept the terms, which would have required her to follow all the rules of the county board room as administered by county supervisors, something she said she could not agree to while still protecting her First Amendment rights.
Bender eventually sentenced O’Connell-Nowain to three months in jail minus the single day she’s already served.
He also admonished her.
“You’re not being punished for your views,” Bender said, “you’re being punished for your conduct. I think you’re being selfish. The board is just trying to conduct county business.”
O’Connell-Nowain was handcuffed moments later and accompanied from the court room by two bailiffs amid a chorus of calls of “love you” from the courtroom crowd, which included her parents. Her husband, Nowain, briefly flashed a raised fist as she passed through the doorway, catching a smile from her in response as she disappeared from view.
“I’m very, very proud of her,” Nowain told the media after the hearing. “She has never once wavered on this.”
Nowain explained that his wife, who he’s been married to for 13 years, is from a family of rabble rousers and has been studying revolution since childhood. He said her heroes include Mahatma Gandhi, John Lewis and Martin Luther King, Jr.
“She’s built for this,” Nowain emphasized. He said didn’t hold it against the judge for admonishing his wife for her behavior, saying Bender is not from the county and simply doesn’t understand the intense political environment of Shasta County. Like his wife, Nowain has also been arrested for allegedly disrupting a county board meeting. His arrest came just a few weeks ago, after he called out from the floor twice during a meeting.
As Nowain exited the Shasta County Superior Court, he caught sight of one of his wife’s supporters standing in the middle of the crosswalk between the courthouse and the county administrative office holding two cardboard signs. One side of the signs read, “Fuck” and “Kevin Crye,” naming the county supervisor who halted the meeting while O’Connell-Nowain sat on the floor. From the other side the signs read, “Fuck” and “ Patrick Jones,” referencing the supervisor whose remarks she had been protesting that day.
Asked by Shasta Scout why he was holding the signs, the protester responded without turning around: “It’s them that are responsible for what happened to her today, the whole chain of events.”
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I’m glad justice involved Jenny received consequences for her actions. Too many of these people have never had consequences growing up. You can blame that on the “me” generation and bad parenting. Smarter people will not push bad behavior at the county board meetings now.
The recent sentencing of Jenny O’Connell-Nowain -a convicted Shasta County resident whose conduct is a matter of multiple interpretations- has quickly hardened into a familiar binary: order versus dissent, decorum versus protest, law versus speech. That framing is emotionally satisfying, but it is also incomplete. Courts exist to adjudicate conduct, not to referee political legitimacy, and the judge in this case did exactly what judges are institutionally designed to do—apply rules governing public meetings and impose consequences for violating them. The conviction, in that narrow sense, is neither shocking nor extraordinary.
At the same time, the insistence that this case is only about conduct ignores why such disruptions occur with increasing frequency. Public meetings do not become flashpoints in healthy civic environments; they do so when ordinary channels of accountability feel unresponsive or captured. Describing the Board of Supervisors as “just trying to conduct county business” may be procedurally accurate, but it is also contextually thin. For many residents, the problem is not that county business is being interrupted—it is that county business itself has lost public trust.
This tension reveals a deeper structural problem. When local governments are widely perceived as incompetent, insulated, or dismissive, enforcement of decorum rules can begin to function less as neutral governance and more as a mechanism of exclusion. Judges are not equipped—nor authorized—to evaluate those broader claims, yet their rulings inevitably reinforce existing power structures. The result is a system that reliably punishes disruption while remaining largely silent on the conditions that provoke it.
None of this requires excusing unlawful behavior or denying the legitimacy of courtroom outcomes. It requires acknowledging that multiple interpretations can coexist: that a resident can violate meeting rules and still be reacting to genuine institutional failure; that a judge can be legally correct and socially disconnected at the same time. If Shasta County wants fewer disruptions, it should focus less on punishing the symptoms and more on restoring confidence in the substance of its governance. Order enforced without legitimacy may be lawful—but it is rarely durable.
Very well and comprehensively stated.
Nothing but admiration for O’Connell-Nowain’s determination to assert her first amendment rights, even if doing so with a not accepted form of civil disobedience.
Her smiling commitment to not have her freedom abridged by accepting the proposed terms of probation which would have limited her free speech rights is beautiful to see.
What a sad waste of time and resources for Shasta County. Meanwhile, we don’t have enough courtrooms for the trial of Robert Milton. Didn’t we just build a BRAND NEW courthouse??
I doubt the constraint is the availability of courtrooms. It’s the availability of court officers, including judges. That’s why this case was presided over by a visiting judge from Madeira County.
https://krcrtv.com/news/local/shasta-county-courthouse-backlog-delays-murder-trial-of-robert-milton “Milton appeared in court on Wednesday to have his trial date set, however, Judge Daniel Flynn stated that no courtrooms are available.”
“No courtrooms are available” could either mean no physical courtrooms, or no fully staffed courtrooms. I’d be willing to bet the schedule takes both into account.
Im glad she gets to serve her time at home . Its good her husband got his job back & getting back paid. Must have been a financialy stressful year & a half. the county lost money & didnt benefit from any of it .
I have never heard of someone sentenced to jail for disrupting a public meeting. I have heard of folks being escorted out of the meeting; but never sentenced to jail. County law? State Law? Federal law? Trust me—I am the mom of a disabled son so I have no intention risking getting anyone in government angry. Just never heard of going to jail for being disruptive at a public meeting.
Hi Victoria. This is a state law. PC 403.
Laying in a supply of popcorn. Shasta County should be even more interesting from here on out.
I’m praying for the Lord’s shaking, exposing, and then reset. It’s coming to our county, plus the state. Yes, an interesting time. And I like popcorn.
Shasta County needs to be shaken like an Etch-A-Sketch.
Hurrah for those brave souls that stand against imperial krakker dumb, HURRAH!!!
When the judge/DA tried to suggest that Patrick Jones was just “doing county business” it was kind of like hearing that Jeffrey Dahmer was just innocently advocating against animal abuse by getting his protein another way.
This makes no sense. Patrick Jones does look like a Billy Bob Thornton in “Sling Blade” Halloween costume –with the starched white shirt, post lobotomy hair cut, and deep sea angler slack jaw under bite.
While I agree with those that reference a waste of court time and criminal justice, when there are other violent criminal cases to try, this is an example of beliefs, values and principles that Nowain stands for and I applaud her.
I believe she will violate her conditions and disrupt the County meeting again, and she should based on the biased views of some in the group who also defend a criminal recently arrested with illegal cultivation and unregistered firearms.
We are living in a twilight zone of justice and politics and the division increases every day.
The District Attorney was forced to file charges on Nowain in an attempt to dissuade her from further action but it will backfire in that others like Nowain and even myself who are exhausted by the influence of extremist beliefs by elected leaders.
By the people and for the people……..
Stroking Egos! Wow this was such a joke! Maybe a loud bull horn and protesting in front of her home for a while.Hmmmmm