Three-and-a-half years after Coulter Loeb was arrested while he took photos of a Philadelphia police officer removing a homeless woman from Rittenhouse Square, his civil rights case is in front of a federal jury.

The five men and three women who were seated for the jury Wednesday morning heard the American Civil Liberties Union and the Philadelphia Law Department cast the case in starkly different light—it is either about the importance of free speech to keep power in check or about a “meddlesome 24-year-old injecting himself into a police situation,” as John Coyle, from the City of Philadelphia Law Department, argued.

Coyle was representing George Gaspar, the police officer who arrested Loeb and charged him with disorderly conduct in July 2011, when Loeb was visiting the city. The college student, who was studying photojournalism, had been in Philadelphia for three days when he walked through Rittenhouse Square with his camera and documented Gaspar's interaction with a transient couple.