|
|
|
NH SEN. JUDD GREGG: The "Newington Five" (for the location of the office) were convicted April 10 in Portsmouth District Court for their October 8 sit-in, and fined $900. Macy Morse was sent to jail for 18 days for refusing to pay, and will be released by May 1 from a Manchester jail...
WA SENS. CANTWELL AND MURRAY: Twelve people were convicted in March in federal court in Seattle, for their simultaneous September 25 sit-ins. Ten received six months probation, while two recidivists rated jail time. Shortly after the invasion if Iraq began, Jean Buskin served a 20 day sentence, and Rev. Anne Hall served seven days in jail...
PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE: Four people arrested August 9 were convicted of trespass in December, and sentenced in January. Three accepted community service in lieu of fines; Esther Kisamore told Colorado Springs Judge Seckman that her years of voluntary community service with the poor were part of her faith and something she enjoyed, not a punishment, and that she could not do imposed community service nor pay the fine. She served 5 days in jail instead...
BUSH IN CINCINNATI: Brian Garry-Crum has been acquitted of assaulting a police horse and obstructing official business after a police horse stomped his foot and disabled his ability to leave as ordered from a no-free-speech zone last October...
BUSH IN PHOENIX: Charges of failure to obey a lawful order were dismissed against Eleanor Eisenberg, Executive Director of the Arizona Civil Liberties Union, related to her arrest while on a sidewalk photographing police arresting another demonstrator at the protest. Other charges from that day have also been dismissed, and Eisenberg has in turn sued two police officers and the city for rights violations...
DULUTH WARPLANE PROTEST: Warrants for contempt of court were sent to three people who refused to pay fines for a 2001 protest of an F-16 exhibit at a local mall. Joel Kilgour was arrested on the warrant as he cycled home from a peace vigil last August and held overnight. He was sentenced to time served the next morning, but then refused a strip search back at the jail. Kilgour was held an additional nine hours in solitary confinement before finally being released. The other two scofflaws remain at large...
McDILL AIR FORCE BASE: Florida prosecutors botched their case against eight people on trial in Tampa for an anti-war blockade at McDill Air Force Base last May. Rather than unlawful assembly, nine people were charged more seriously with resisting or opposing an officer. Before the defendants even presented their case, the judge dismissed that count. "They did not resist arrest. I think the state of Florida was wrong," he said...
ACTION FOR NUCLEAR ABOLITION: Commending her efforts to prevent harm to Nevadans, but declaring that this time she'd "stepped over the line a little too far," veteran Beatty Court Justice of the Peace Bill Sullivan - on circumstantial evidence only - convicted Susi Snyder of trespass at the Yucca Mountain, Nevada, construction site for the national nuclear waste repository. Last October 14, Snyder and four others were arrested in a Bureau of Land Management parking lot adjacent to the dump site, but open to the public. No one in court March 31 could testify how she got there from the place she had allegedly trespassed on the Yucca Mountain site. Her codefendants accepted a plea agreement to avoid the expense of returning to Nevada for trial. All five were sentenced to 100 hours community service in their home communities. Trespass charges against 23 people arrested at the nearby Nevada nuclear weapons test site the same weekend have been dismissed...
WASHINGTON, D.C.: In D.C. Superior Court November 6, seven people were lauded by a judge who nonetheless convicted them of incommoding Congress. On October 9, the eve of Congressional authorization for war, the group sat down at the gatehouse after being denied entry into the marble halls. Gary Ashbeck and Guy Lopez have both had charges resulting from their arrest at a Knights of Columbus rally dismissed. (Ashbeck's arrest was reported in the previous issue; Lopez was arrested earlier when he stood and shouted truths about Columbus)...
