Occupy Wall Street Protester Gets 3 Months In Jail

A woman who assaulted a police officer during an Occupy Wall Street protest was sentenced to three months in jail on Monday, The New York Times reported.

A New York Supreme Court judge sentenced Cecily McMillan, a 25-year-old graduate student at the New School, to jail time along with five years of probation for assaulting police officer Grantley Bovell in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park in 2012. She was convicted on charges of second-degree assault after a four week trial.

Over 150,000 people signed an online petition urging Governor Andrew Cuomo to pardon McMillan. But Justice Ronald A. Zweibel said the law demands that she be jailed.

"A civilized society must not allow an assault to be committed under the guise of civil disobedience," Zweibel said according to The NY Times.

Officer Bovell said at McMillan's trial that he first saw her yelling at another officer during a demonstration marking the six-month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Bovell was leading McMillan out of the park when she asked if he was filming the incident. She then bent down, suddenly came back up and hit Bovell in the face with her elbow, the newspaper reported.

McMillan testified she hit Bovell in the face because he grabbed her breast. Her supporters also say she thought she was being sexually assaulted and acted in self-defense.

The defendant also said she had no intentions of joining the protest that day, which occurred on St. Patrick's Day. McMillan was out drinking and was at the park waiting for a friend to continue partying, The NY Times reported.

The maximum penalty for second-degree assault is seven years. There have been 420 sentences, mostly probation, out of the 2,600 arrests made during the Occupy Wall Street protests, which was fueled by outrage over most of the nation's wealth being controlled by one percent of the population.