'ROSA PARKS' OF 4TH AMENDMENT FACES FELONY FOR STOPPING COPS FROM WALKING ONTO RURAL HOMESTEAD
BACKWOODS FARMER BABE BUSTED FOR BURNING BUSH—ALONG WITH SOME TRASH, ALLEGEDLY
Cecilia Merrill posing in her quail coop holding a copy of the charges filed against her by police for allegedly burning garbage on her farm in rural upstate New York. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
CONSTABLE, NEW YORK May 15, 2026 Last updated 9:12 AM, May 16
As the Nation celebrates its 250th anniversary, video of an upstate New York woman arrested and charged with a felony for standing up for the Fourth Amendment is going viral.
"In America you can do things on your property and that's why I came here," Cecilia Merrill said as she was arrested Friday morning in front of her crying 7-year-old daughter. "That's why it matters."
The 36-year-old started rolling the video herself with her mobile phone when police surrounded her. Her common law husband took over when cops cuffed her.
The case sounds in the same kind of bureaucratic absurdities that inspired Alro Guthrie's classic Thanksgiving anthem, "Alice's Restaurant Massacree." Both also begin with trash.
By "here" Merrill meant a very rural part of the Empire State along the Canadian border about an hour north of Lake Placid. Constable, New York is a place dominated by Amish farms so rural some of the roads lack poles to transmit electricity. The Amish get around by horse-drawn carriages and kick-scooters that resemble bicycles but lack peddles and a chain.
Merrill, like many local residents, does not live in a house. She and her family live in a trailer.
Meanwhile the police officer who arrested Merrill—and her father—earned $157,017 in 2021 alone.
After her arrest and release, Merrill told The Free Lance News she finds solace in the woods and, in particular, fly fishing for trout in the nearby Chateaugay River. She proudly showed off her tattoos of trout and mayflies.
"Farming and fishing," she said. "That's my life. I love to fish."
"That's my peace," Merrill explained. "That's where I spend time away from all of this shit of this world."
Cecilia Merrill shows the tattoos of two trout and a may fly on her arm. The lines on the trout are a map of the Chateaugay river that she regularly fishs. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
The trouble started Friday morning—a day after New York's annual spring time burn ban expired on May 14. In order to prevent forest fires, people living in rural areas burn the dead wood that falls on their land over the long winter to prevent that dead wood from being fuel for a wild fire.
The Merrill clan has 50 acres of it.
But State Department of Environmental Conservation officer Jennifer Okonuk alleges that, as she was driving down the public road in front of Merrill's rural homestead, she detected something other than wood burning behind Merrill's trailer.
The DEC officer got out to investigate, according to the police report Okonuk filed against Merrill, and began to walk across the lawn in front of Merrill's trailer. That's when Merrill and her father allegedly stopped her.
"The defendants approached me yelling stating I wasn't allowed on her property as I was trespassing," Okonuk alleges in the supporting deposition she submitted in support of the charges she filed against Merrill and her father. "Both of the individuals would not let me walk to the fire to photograph the evidence."
After that happened, officer Okonuk called the State Police "for back up," the criminal complaint against Merrill alleges.
When the State Police arrived—including a Trooper named “outlaw”—Okonuk had Merrill and her father arrested. After the arrests, Okonuk admits she entered the property without a warrant and allegedly discovered a plastic chair and a box fan in the fire.
Okonuk has been a police officer with the state DEC for 17 years. Her base pay in 2025 was $89,600. She earned an additional $27,767 in overtime for a total of $117,367.
In 2021, Officer Okonuk made a whopping $157,017, all according to public records.
Okonuk charged Merrill with allegedly tampering with evidence, obstructing governmental administration and "unlawful open burning of garbage," according to the criminal complaints Okonuk filed against Merrill. Merrill's father, Robin, was also arrested and charged.
The garbage-burning charge is a violation like a traffic ticket, but the obstruction charge is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison. Civil rights lawyers call the charge "contempt of cop.”
The tampering with physical evidence charge is the most serious of all: a felony, punishable by up to four years in state prison.
When The Free Lance News arrived at Merrill’s home Friday afternoon, she and her father had been released from police custody with deak appearance tickets and future court dates. Smoke—but not fire—was rising from the fire pit.
The way Merrill saw it, “They should be thankful I waited for the burn ban to be over.”
Behind the trailer Merrill, her common law husband Chad and their three children live in, there were coops filled with quail and chickens. Guinea hens roamed free about the property. Cows were fenced in on a nearby hillside. An old sign from when the Merrill family grew and sold strawberries pointed to the road: "Backwoods Berries."
Rosa Parks faced down racial segregation in the South. Dollree Mapp set Supreme Court precedent preventing suspicionless searches of citizens by police after she demanded to see a warrant before letting police into her home. Now—two months away from America's 250th birthday—Merrill is doing her part to ensure the continued vitality of the Constitution.
"This is about some lady thinking she can just walk across my lawn," Merrill said. "I wanted proof she can walk through my lawn. She couldn't give it to me."
Before the Revolutionary Congress enacted the Constitution, it added the Bill of Rights—which guaranteed a number of civil rights to Americans. One of those rights, enshrined in the Fourth Amendment, requires police obtain a search warrant from a judge before they enter private property.
The Supreme Court recognizes an exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement in "exigent circumstances"—which means some kind of emergency. It's not clear if burning garbage, which is not a crime, but only a violation, could legally justify a warrantless entry onto and search of private property by police.
By late Friday afternoon, video of Merrill's arrest garnered more than 88,000 views on Facebook.
In 2024, police officers for the State Department of Environmental Conservation unleashed a wave of public condemnation when they killed a man's pet squirrel named "Peanut."
The Peanut debacle has haunted DEC ever since. DEC Commissioner Amanda Lefton was forced to issue a mea cupla on behalf of the agency in 2025.
"We know we can do better moving forward," she said.
The DEC did not respond to an invitation to comment.
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