Court update re: scheduled compliance hearing, from Mark Colville of the Kings Bay Plowshares

Posted on January 8, 2022

Mark, wife Luz and Bodhi

[Most of the Kings Bay Plowshares, now done with their prison sentences, are on three years of supervised release. Noncooperation brings consequences, as Mark Colville writes about below. His court hearing is now scheduled for February 4.]

by Mark Colville

January 7, 2021

For those who have been trying to keep abreast of my never ending mud-wrestle with the federal government: Thank you, and, uh, there’s an update…
Back in November, I received notice of a summons to appear in a Hartford courtroom for a “compliance hearing” before the honorable Michael P. Shea. At issue is my polite refusal to be housetrained by the local probation office here in New Haven, which expects me to pee in a cup for them and voluntarily disclose all of my personal financial information (which, let’s face it, ain’t much to tell anyway!), simply because I’ve been found guilty of blaspheming against the almighty nuclear god of the national security state. We managed to get the thing postponed until this coming Monday, and have spent the last few weeks getting ready for possible retaliatory strikes that might ultimately include another sojourn in prison.
Well, yesterday a hanging curveball came my way: the court has decided to shift all of its business to a video conference format because of the current upsurge in Covid infections, and I have a constitutional right to appear before the judge in person – a right which I’ve decided to refuse to give up. This has forced another continuance, to February 4th, which we confidently hope will be enough time for our son Isaiah to make it to the other side of his current series of chemotherapy treatments. 
Thank ya Jaysus!!
Some may question the wisdom of refusing to unquestioningly jump through every arbitrary hoop that a probation department will throw up, as a way of avoiding re-incarceration. But in my experience, that very quickly becomes the slipperiest of slopes; I end up being led by fear, not love, and forgetting exactly where it was that my conscience told me to stand in the first place. In case you want that unpacked a bit more, below is the statement I’ve written to the judge in advance of the hearing. My family and I remain deeply moved by the support and accompaniment that never seems to stop flowing our way. Much love your way… 
Mark
<<<< >>>>
To the Honorable Michael P. Shea:
January 6, 2022
It is my understanding that this summons to appear before you stems from my principled refusal to comply with two of the mandates imposed by the probation department in New Haven, pursuant to my conviction in Brunswick, Georgia federal court in October, 2019. As explained by the officer assigned to my case, Elizabeth Ogilvie, those mandates are to submit to random drug-testing, and to divulge personal financial information that will be used by the government to seize funds for the court-ordered restitution which, as of now, remains a part of my sentence. (It should be noted that the restitution order is currently under appeal in the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta, Georgia.) This statement is intended to provide some essential clarification, from my perspective, as you discern how to proceed with this complaint. Of course, I also welcome the opportunity to address these and any other relevant issues in person.
First, I wish to assure you that my non-compliance in these matters is accompanied neither by an attitude of defiance nor disrespect, but rather one of regret. (This, to be sure, can be confirmed by Officer Ogilvie, based on our conversations.) Given my personal and family life circumstances at home – of which the court will be informed through separate submissions – this is a frighteningly inconvenient time to be in dispute with those tasked with my supervision, or to risk being placed under sanctions that could include yet another period of separation from my loved ones. I am doing so only because of the unshaken conviction that this is what faith and conscience demand of me. It is also my sincere belief that this non-cooperation is justified by the court’s own findings, as well as its application of the law, at my trial.
Based largely on the testimony of expert witnesses, the court in my case repeatedly affirmed that the actions for which I was charged were not only motivated by sincerely-held religious beliefs, but were also entirely consistent with core teachings of the Roman Catholic Church that have informed the consciences of believers for more than five hundred years. Subsequent to that finding, our jury was forbidden to hear or consider that evidence, and further instructed that the question of the legality of nuclear weapons was irrelevant. 
Obviously, I have a personal opinion about whether or not a conviction would have been the result if Judge Lisa Godbey Wood had ruled differently on those two points of dispute, but it is certainly not my desire to waste anyone’s time here with an attempt to re-litigate my case. For the purposes of this hearing, I simply wish to make the claim that the probation department is under none of the constraints that those decisions imposed on the jury at my trial. This means that the illegality of nuclear weapons (which became recognized internationally by ratified treaty as of January 22, 2021), and the faith-based nature of my actions are not only relevant when it comes to my supervision, they are essential factors in determining how, or even if I should be supervised by a probation department at all.
From the early 1990’s to this day, I’ve been part of an international movement known as Plowshares, which since 1980 has engaged in nonviolent acts of symbolic nuclear disarmament intended to make real in history the words of the great Hebrew prophet Isaiah: “They shall hammer their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.” (Isaiah 2:4). Our analysis of the present moment is that human survival depends on the accomplishment of this ancient mandate, before the inevitability of nuclear annihilation comes to fruition. Our understanding of politics and history further indicates that the United States government is utterly incapable of disarming itself, and it therefore becomes the right and obligation of citizens in a democracy to initiate that process. Chief among the objectives of the Plowshares movement is to address the legal vacuum into which our federal courts have placed nuclear weapons, in much the same way that citizens once had to place themselves outside the law in order to begin the process of breaking the legal seal that protected the horrific criminality of slavery.
To be clear: I am not asking the court to agree with any of this analysis as I’ve explained it here, much less to embrace the faith-based doctrines that have been so formative in my life. It is simply my petition that the court acknowledge – during a time when the government is spending what amounts to $100,000 of public funds per minute over the next ten years on the proliferation of first-strike nuclear weapons – that it is reasonable for me as a citizen to hold these convictions and, within the boundaries of nonviolence, to act upon them. I appeal to you then, Judge Shea, to appreciate the bind that I find myself in as I appear before you.
Compliance with the two mandates from the probation department that are the subject of this hearing would place me in a posture of affirming what I know to be a lie; namely, that my beliefs and my conduct have been both irrational, and destructive of the community into which I am currently re-integrating from prison. Such coercion into prevarication constitutes punishment, which, according to the guiding legal principles behind supervised release, is an overstepping of the authority vested in the probation department in New Haven.
Please note that I bear no ill-will toward anyone in that office. Since April of 2018, apart from the eighteen months spent incarcerated, I’ve voluntarily submitted to federal supervision – including curfews, travel restrictions, an ankle monitor, and the obligation to refrain from entering any military installations – without incident, bad report, disciplinary action or complaint. I even revoked my own bail at one point and decided to await trial in the maximum-security holding facility in Glynn County Georgia, rather than risk violating the probation department’s directives when they had become unnecessarily restrictive. My cooperation should be well documented. And today, nearly four years later, after a full twenty-seven months of unblemished compliance, in a community into which I am obviously quite well-integrated already, it seems more than reasonable to ask: What exactly do they intend to “supervise” during these next three years, and what do drug-testing and the invasion of my right to practice my religion have to do with that supervision?
It is my hope that this compliance hearing will provide some much-needed clarification on these questions. Thank you for your attention.
Blessings and Peace,
Mark Colville
xxx

from the New Haven Register

New Haven peace activist dealing with son’s cancer while jail still possibility

by Ed Stannard

NEW HAVEN — Mark Colville served 18 months in jail for his 2018 protest of the U.S. nuclear weapons program, and he’s still battling what he considers an idolatrous government.

Because he refuses to submit to drug tests or consent to disclosing his finances, Colville faces a hearing that could end up with his being put back in jail for violating the terms of his supervised release.

Colville was one of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, who entered the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia on April 4, 2018. Colville poured blood, hammered and wrote biblical texts on the monuments to the Trident D5 nuclear missile and was arrested, tried and convicted.

Since his release from the jail in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Sept. 10, 2021, however, he and his family also have been dealing with a more personal issue: his son Isaiah’s Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“It was diagnosed right about the time I was getting out of prison, so it was a big shock,” Colville said. Isaiah Colville, 19, will have his last chemotherapy treatment Monday, and the journey his family has taken has been complicated by the elder Colville’s legal issues.

“It’s a very aggressive form of cancer,” Mark Colville said. “You get tumors that grow very quickly, but the treatments, the chemotherapy regimen, is also very effective.” According to Luz Catarineau, Isaiah’s mother, the treatment gives her son an 80 percent chance of a cure. “But it’s still a very aggressive form of cancer. He’s not out of the woods yet,” Colville said.

Colville’s hearing originally was scheduled for early December. “We asked for a postponement until my son’s treatments were done … and the court wouldn’t give me that, the government wouldn’t agree to a postponement that long.” He was given until this past Monday.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic’s latest surge gave Colville some legal breathing room. The federal court moved its hearings to video conferencing, and Colville would have to consent not to meet U.S. District Judge Michael Shea in person.

He wouldn’t do that, forcing another extension to Feb. 4, past his son’s final treatment.

“Under any circumstances … this looks like it’s a process that could end up sending me back to prison,” Colville said. “So I have an apprehension about not speaking to this person in the flesh, partly because I’ve never met him before. But the fact is that everybody has a constitutional right to appear in person before the judge. And in order for me to do the hearing by video conference, I have to give up that right.”

He would have to sign a form and answer questions before the hearing began “to make sure that I agree to give up my constitutional rights to be seen in person. I simply decided that I wasn’t going to give up that right. … The exercising of this right gives me a delay,” at least until his son finishes chemotherapy.

Even so, Isaiah Colville will undergo “a bone scan and a bunch of other tests that are scheduled now for the same day that I’m appearing in court, Feb. 4,” Colville said.

“I’m particularly concerned about the prognosis for my son,” Colville said. “That’s going to be followed by a whole bunch of medical tests and screenings which will indicate what, if any, further treatment he needs. And so our future is very uncertain. As is his own future, and so this is a horrible time to risk being separated from family again.”

A man who strictly follows his Roman Catholic faith, Mark Colville knows that his actions to protest the United States’ nuclear weapons program, which he says is both immoral and illegal under international law, will complicate life for his family. He and Catarineau already open the Amistad Catholic Worker house on Rosette Street to the needy — or they did before the pandemic.

Now, a warming tent is being prepared in the back yard with a fire pit, and the house is being renovated to better serve people. Colville said they are trying to discern “what hospitality means” in the era of COVID.

“It’s not unusual that our personal life, our family life, gets wrapped up in our neighborhood life or our ministry life, and of course the legal problems that we have based on trying to resist violence and war,” Colville said. “That’s familiar, but this is a scary situation for us. It’s particularly frustrating for me because I’ve tried to act responsibly with regard to the government right from the beginning.”

During Colville’s trial, the judge “affirmed repeatedly that … my actions were religiously motivated by sincerely held religious beliefs,” Colville said. But the jury was told not to consider his beliefs. Also, the question of whether nuclear weapons are legal was ruled to be irrelevant. He said he could prove they are illegal based on a United Nations treaty and the Constitution.

But even though he was sentenced to 21 months in prison (18 months served before his conviction), three years of supervised release and $33,000 in restitution (which the group can share), the only requirements he’s refused have been the drug tests, which he said at least one co-defendant was not asked to submit, and the giving up of his financial records, because he said that would make him complicit in the nation’s idolatry of nuclear weapons.

During the long delays before trial, during his time in prison and the 11/2-year delay in sentencing, “over the past close to four years … I have never once violated any of the directives that have been imposed by the Probation Department,” he said.

He even revoked his own bail at one point. After the court refused to loosen restrictions on him, including an ankle bracelet, limits on travel and a curfew, “I decided just to go back to jail to await trial in jail in Georgia.” The reason was “the bail was very exorbitant, and it had been put up by friends and supporters and I wasn’t comfortable in the situation where other people’s money was at stake based on my compliance with these things.”

Colville said he does not take refusing to comply with the government lightly. But the things he is being asked to do are punitive, he said. “The purpose of supervised release is twofold. It’s supposed to help the offender who’s coming out of prison, help them reintegrate into the community. … And then secondly to protect the community, into which the person is reintegrating from any potential harm because of his freedom.”

He wants to ask the judge why he must adhere to the rules despite clearly meeting the goals of probation. But “despite the fact that there are very good people running the Probation Department in New Haven, they’re pursuing a regimen of intimidation against me, whether intentionally or not.”

“Forget about my sob story. People get out of prison every day and are subjected to these things. And most of the time, it seems like the logical thing for people to do is just to do whatever they tell you to do. Because otherwise, they’re gonna throw you back in jail, you know, and they’ll get away with it. I’m in a position where I could say, ‘Hold on a second. This isn’t right, this is punitive.’

He said his motivations give him a platform to point to the government’s wrong in punishing him after his sentence was complete. “Partly because what I did was an act of faith and conscience,” he said. “I’m not ashamed of it. … I’m not sitting here with the word ‘guilty’ tattooed on my forehead, OK. Whereas most people, most convicted felons certainly do carry that around with them. Most are terrified of going back to prison. And I’m not I’m not encumbered by either of those things. And so I feel a certain sense of responsibility to call attention to the fact that these probation departments are acting capriciously and arbitrarily impugn punitively and it’s not right.”