It really comes down to we are either a nation of laws or a nation of lawlessness. The easy way to judge these moral issues is keep the circumstance but change the players, then it becomes obvious everyone responsible for the statute was not only morally wrong but committed a criminal act and should be punished.
Consider this, if a person decorated their mailbox to honor their favorite sports team. People drinking down the road liked a different team so they took a large truck and a rope and tore down the mailbox leaving the owner with tire ruts, a large hole and an expensive repair bill, no judge or july would care that they were offended by the mailbox. They could and should be charged as trespassers, destruction of private property and a slew of lesser charges, each could easily serve time.
This is an easy one for me, if I were on the jury, those people would go to jail, no question, my opinion of the statute would not even be considered, they destroyed something belonging to someone else that they didn’t like without even trying to use legal means to handle the situation.