Three months after four Ferguson protesters were acquitted on all charges in criminal court, they're going back to the courthouse — but this time, it's Ferguson and its prosecutors who will be playing defense.In a lawsuit filed today in federal court, protesters Jasmine Woods, Keith Rose and Michael Lhotak, along with fellow arrestee Michael Powers, allege that the north county St. Louis suburb and the private law firm that handled its prosecutions, Curtis Heinz, worked in concert to deprive them of their rights — and to make money for Curtis Heinz. They cite the Department of Justice's March 2015 investigation of the Ferguson Police Department, which alleged that the department "engaged in a custom and practice of violating the constitutional rights of citizens."
The suit was filed by the non-profit ArchCity Defenders, which handled the protesters' earlier criminal cases, as well as the private law firm of Dowd & Dowd.
The four protesters say they were demonstrating peacefully two days after the death of Michael Brown when they were charged with "failure to comply," even though there wasn't a lawful order that they'd refused, they allege.…