9-23-05, 9:18 am
Sept. 23 -- On the first day of testimony in their trial, a federal judge charged two of four peace activist defendants with contempt for telling a federal jury in Ithaca, New York that they had already been tried.
Senior U.S. District Judge Thomas J. McAvoy charged Peter DeMott and Teresa Grady, two of the St. Patrick's Four, with contempt of court for testifying that a jury in a state court had already refused to find them guilty.
On St. Patrick's Day in 2003, just days before President Bush launched his war on Iraq, four members of the Catholic Worker Community in Ithaca, New York staged a peaceful protest by entering a local military recruitment station, prayed, read a statement, and poured their own blood near the entrance of the facility to signify the violence of war.
They were promptly arrest for 'criminal mischief.' Their trial in the Tompkins County Court in April 2004 ended in a hung jury with most of the jurors voting to acquit.
The federal government decided that it would try the four again in a federal court on more grandiose and less difficult to prove charges of conspiracy.
As the trial began, the judge forbade the defendants from testifying on a laundry list of topics including: the illegality of the Iraq war, international law and its relevance to their actions, the principles of the Geneva Convention, facts or statistics about Bush's war, descriptions of damage or death caused by war, descriptions of what the defendants encountered on their trip to Iraq, and more. They were also prohibited from testifying about their previous trial, which ended with a deadlocked jury.
DeMott was charged with an additional count of contempt for refusing to name others who may have helped the four defendants.
In court, defense attorney William Quigley pointed out that testimony offered by the arresting officer, which described the defendants as 'friendly' at the time of their arrest, made the charge of conspiracy to impede an officer invalid. According to the law, this charge can only be brought if threat, force, or intimidation accompanied the incident.
The judge refused to drop the charge.
On another technical but crucial issue, Quigley pointed out that the indictment, as written by the federal government prosecutor, Miroslav Lovric, charged the defendants with violations that did not match the statute as literally written. Instead of scrapping the indictment, the judge unilaterally amended it and instructed the jury to accept his interpretation of the reading of the indictment.
Further, the actual statute on which the charges were based indicates that the 'use of force, intimidation or threat' clause is to be considered as a component for each form of transgression. The judge, however, instructed the jury that the 'force, intimidation or threat' clause only applied to the first transgression of inducing an officer to leave the place where duties are performed. To prove the other transgressions, Judge McAvoy ruled that no proof of force, intimidation or threat is required. This interpretation makes it easier to convict without the government having fully proven its case.
According to an account provided by the New York Times, the prosecution's entire case rested not on proving intimidation or threats to the arresting officer, but that the defendants have previous records of expressing their opposition to war through non-violent protest. In other words, the prosecutor's aim was to try the defendants for deeds in their pasts, not for the charges on which they were brought to trial.
In a statement to the press, Quigley, an acclaimed public interest lawyer and law professor at Loyola University School of Law, pointed out that 'the government has charged the defendants with crimes based on a rarely used statute, so there isn't guiding case law telling us how the statute should be applied.'
'But the implications of the judge's rulings ... should not be underestimated. The government has disregarded the defendants' rights to due process and in effect, changed the language of the indictment after trial has begun.'
'Further,' added Quigley, 'the government has taken what would have been considered a State level misdemeanor offense that would result in six months local jail time and literally crafted federal law to fit, that, if convicted, will now result in six years incarceration in federal prison. The effect this will have on the public's right to dissent - a cornerstone of our democracy - is absolutely chilling.'
In sum, what we have here is a case where a judge, bent on putting away four peaceniks, has, in a biased way, aided an incompetent federal prosecutor whose entire case is about stirring up animosity against four non-violent protesters, as if they represented a great threat to law and order.
To accomplish this, the judge told the jury that it needn't follow the law in order to convict the defendants. Additionally, he has prevented the defendants from putting on an adequate defense and explaining their actions.
Perhaps, to save time, taxpayers' dollars, and the strain on our intelligence, the judge should have ordered the defendants to be dunked in water like the witches of 17th century Salem, Massachusetts. If they drown they must be guilty.
--Joel Wendland is managing editor of Political Affairs and may be reached at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.
