Nukewatch Winter Quarterly 2019-2020

“The Pentagon has many installations – and we just walked out of one of them.  It’s a place where they weaponize the law. They wield it mostly against the poor, the people who have all the redlined neighborhoods in this country know that very well,” Mark Colville, one of the defendants, said to Gloria Tatum

By Marjorie Cohn, Truthout

The seven Catholic peace activists who were convicted on October 24 for their symbolic protest against nuclear weapons at the Kings Bay Naval Base are now facing a two-to-three-month wait to hear their prison sentences. They could face more than 20 years in prison.

“Our own lives are uncertain regarding the possible length of prison sentences,” defendant Martha Hennessy told Truthout in an exclusive interview. “But we rejoice in the fact that more scrutiny is being directed at the purpose of the Kings Bay Naval Base in southern Georgia.”

The Kings Bay Naval Base is home to nuclear armed submarines with two dozen ballistic Trident D5 missiles, each of which is 30 times more powerful than the atomic bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The seven peace activists—Martha Hennessy, Mark Colville, Clare Grady, Jesuit Fr. Stephen Kelly, Patrick O’Neill, Carmen Trotta and Elizabeth McAlister, who are collectively known as the Kings Bay Plowshares 7—were convicted by a Georgia federal jury of conspiracy, destruction of property on a naval station, depredation of government property, and trespass after entering the base on April 4, 2018.

They came onto the base bearing hammers, baby bottles containing their own blood, crime scene tape, a copy of Daniel Ellsberg’s book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, and an indictment that charged the U.S. government with crimes against peace. They cut a fence and entered the base without being detected. They used the hammers to deface a monument to the Trident, poured their blood and left a sign that read, “The Ultimate Logic of Trident is Omnicide.” They went to three different sites on the base, including a storage bunker for nuclear weapons where they damaged statues and poured their blood on various structures.

“We understand the efficiency of the State is a formidable force, and we ourselves are not surprised with the guilty verdict on all counts,” Hennessy told Truthout. “In a time of withdrawing from nuclear treaties and promoting violence in foreign policy, we are left to wonder what the future may hold for the world.”

Facing a Jury without Opinions on Nuclear Risks

The jury that convicted the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 activists was self-avowedly apathetic about the risks posed to humanity by nuclear weapons. [When the pool of 72 prospective jurors was asked by the judge “Does anyone have strong feelings one way or the other about nuclear weapons?” not a single person raised their hand.] And the judge and prosecution worked together to prevent the defendants from sharing information or arguments to raise jurors’ consciousness on the issue.

Sam Husseini, communications director at the Institute for Public Accuracy, a progressive nonprofit organization, attended the three-day trial. “It was a subtly but insidiously controlled courtroom with the judge and prosecution working hand in glove,” Husseini told Truthout. “The defendants were allowed to speak about their religious beliefs and to some degree how they relate to nuclear weapons. But it was all presented as subjective and expert testimony on international law, and justification and necessity of urgent action were excluded.”

The defendants, who said they were following the command of the biblical prophet Isaiah to “beat swords into plowshares,” were denied the right to present the defense of necessity, which allows one to commit a crime in order to avoid a greater harm. They were also denied the right to discuss the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which “ensures that interests in religious freedom are protected.” Thus, they were limited to their own testimony about their subjective motivations for their acts.

Our own lives are uncertain regarding the possible length of prison sentences…. But we rejoice in the fact that more scrutiny is being directed at the purpose of the Kings Bay Naval Base. — Martha Hennessy

“Defendants were allowed to briefly discuss their moral objections to nuclear weapons but were cut off quickly. No outside evidence or testimony was allowed,” defense attorney Bill Quigley told Truthout.

Husseini added: “The manner that the judge allowed the case to be made did not make it clear that the house was indeed on fire—or even that there was a house. The reality of the nuclear weapons, the threat they pose, and certainly their illegality, were not objectively communicated” to the jury.

Speaking with Truthout in an exclusive email interview, defendant Patrick O’Neill shared an anecdote that further highlights the degree to which the jury reflected the widespread ignorance about nuclear risks that exists in the U.S. now.

“When Judge Lisa Wood asked the entire jury pool: ‘Do any of you have a strong opinion about nuclear weapons—pro or con, would you raise your hand?’ Of 73 people, not one raised a hand,” O’Neill told Truthout. “That is an indication that people living in the throes of the nuclear age, at 2 minutes to midnight on the Doomsday Clock, have come to see [weapons of mass destruction] as inconsequential—nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert 24/7 is now a ‘normal’ part of people’s lives.”

O’Neill added, “The Pentagon has brainwashed people to just trust a government that is imperiling the earth and risking the end of life as we know. That’s why we went to Kings Bay—to hopefully wake people up.”

Refusal to Allow the Necessity Defense

If the judge had allowed the peace activists to raise a “necessity defense”—in other words, arguing that their actions were necessary to avoid the use of nuclear weapons—the jury could have come to a very different decision. There was abundant evidence to support a necessity defense.

In order to sustain the necessity defense, Quigley explained in his brief, the defendant must show four elements:

(1) that she believed that she needed to choose between two evils and she chose the lesser evil. “Any use of nuclear weapons by definition cannot discriminate between civilian and military targets. Each of the many Trident nuclear missiles kept at Kings Bay contain many multiples of the destructive power used by the United States in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

(2) that she sincerely believed and reasonably acted to prevent imminent harm. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists says the world is closer to nuclear devastation than ever before. President Trump repeatedly declared that “all options are on the table” and threatened North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

(3) that she reasonably believed her action could help to avoid that harm. “Only by symbolically disarming these nuclear weapons is there any hope for real disarmament.”

(4) that she reasonably believed there were no legal alternatives to breaking the law. “Defendants have each spoken, written, prayed, petitioned, and lobbied for nuclear disarmament and peace for decades. These actions are the only ones left which might make a difference.”

Quigley’s brief cited the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, which would allow the United States to use nuclear weapons in response to a non-nuclear attack. The Doomsday Clock, maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, continues to stand at 2 minutes to midnight. The US refuses to join the majority of the nations of the world in ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal, and he may well pull out of the New START Treaty as well, “which would leave nuclear weapons free from all controls” Quigley wrote.

It was a subtly but insidiously controlled courtroom with the judge and prosecution working hand in glove. — Sam Husseini

Ellsberg believes the defendants were “definitely entitled” to present the necessity defense. As he said in a statement to the Institute for Public Accuracy, “an action which would under other circumstances be illegal can be justified as legal by a reasonable belief that it is necessary to avert a much greater evil: in this case omnicide, the collateral murder of nearly every human on earth in a war in which the nuclear missiles aboard Trident submarines were launched.”

The judge found that the defendants could have protested nuclear weapons without illegally entering Kings Bay and could’ve used the political process to change nuclear policy. But, Quigley wrote in his motion to reconsider, “there are no facts at all in the record” to support the judge’s conclusions. In fact, the defense tried unsuccessfully to introduce evidence that defendants had tried to effect change through the political process “for decades without success.”

In a declaration filed with the court, Ellsberg wrote about the significance of civil disobedience:

[I]t was not until widespread campaigns of civil disobedience, affecting public awareness and conscience . . . relating to the women’s right to vote, civil rights, and the right to unionize that the electoral and legislative and legal processes began to function to extend and protect these rights in a way we now take for granted as fundamental to democracy.

Refusal to Allow Expert Testimony on Illegality of Nuclear Weapons

“Tellingly,” Quigley wrote, “the Magistrate granted the Government the right to preclude the jury from hearing evidence about nuclear weapons without never once discussing or even acknowledging the uncontested lethality of nuclear weapons.”

Moreover, the judge denied the defense motion to present the expert testimony of Professor Francis Boyle about the illegality of nuclear weapons under both international and U.S. law. “[T]hese defendants acted lawfully and reasonably to prevent egregious and fundamentally prohibited of all crimes, war crimes,” Boyle wrote in a declaration. He concluded that the defendants did not have the criminal intent required to convict them of the charged crimes.

But while the “Defendants’ subjective beliefs about the illegality of nuclear weapons may be relevant background information, whether nuclear weapons are actually illegal under international or domestic law (a doubtful proposition) is not relevant or an appropriate issue to litigate in this case,” Judge Lisa Godbey Wood wrote.

Refusal to Allow Religious Freedom Restoration Act Defense

The judge also denied the defense motion to argue that the prosecution violated their rights to religious exercise protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Although the judge concluded that the defendants had established the prima facie elements of a RFRA defense, the government demonstrated a compelling interest in prosecuting the defendants for their actions at Kings Bay, citing the safety of individuals on the base, the security of the assets there, and the smooth operation of the base.

If the jury would have heard the facts about the nuclear bombs headquartered at Kings Bay … they would probably have come to a different decision.

—Def. Attorney Bill Quigley

The defense, however, elicited an admission from Scott Bassett, communications officer for Kings Bay base, that he had told The Washington Post that the protesters didn’t threaten any personnel or asset, or damage any military asset, including submarines or weapons systems, at the base.

Reactions to the Verdict

The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 are asking people to sign a worldwide petition urgently requesting that the charges against them be dropped.

Peace activist and retired Col. Ann Wright summed up the irony of the prosecution of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, writing on Facebook, “The US nuclear weapons are so poorly protected that the 7 were able to get into the more secure area! They should be rewarded for pointing out how poorly guarded the weapons are instead of being on trial!!!”

“I don’t see [what I did] that’s the crime,” defendant Liz McAlister said on Democracy Now! “I think the crime is the weapons. The crime is the money spent on the weapons. The crime is the money taken from the real needs in our country and in our world to spend it on these weapons of mass destruction. And we need to stop that. And that’s the message that I want to continue to stand behind.”

Meanwhile, defense attorney Quigley told Truthout that he thinks the verdict will “make convictions easier and defenses harder” in the future.

“If the jury would have heard the facts about the nuclear bombs headquartered at Kings Bay—with 3,800 times the destructive power of Hiroshima and the real possibility of ending all life on the planet—they would probably have come to a different decision about the legality of what these courageous people did,” he said.

—Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. 

Copyright, Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission. <https://truthout.org/articles/convicted-anti-nuclear-activists-speak-out-pentagon-has-brainwashed-people/>

 

 

Nukewatch Winter Quarterly 2019-2020

By John LaForge

The four-day trial of the seven King Bay Plowshares defendants began Oct. 21 with a day-long process of jury selection. About 78 potential jurors filled the observers’ seats in the Brunswick, Georgia courtroom of Federal District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood. Family members and other supporters of the defendants had to crowd into an adjacent courtroom and watch a TV projection of the proceedings.

Judge Lisa Godbey Wood slogged through the questioning of the jury pool, ostensibly trying to weed out bias or prejudice against the opposing parties. It was all a finely tuned theater production that lent an air of legitimacy to the thoroughly political show trial.

However, there was no authentic search for a jury of “one’s peers” or any real chance of a fair hearing.

First, the large jury pool of 78 people, although drawn from the area surrounding the Kings Bay Trident submarine base, one of the largest collections of nuclear weapons on Earth, gave the impression of not having a single thought about the weapons.

After Lisa Godbey Wood explained that the “presumption of innocence” is granted to all defendants in criminal trials, the judge asked, “Does anyone here already believe the defendants are guilty?”

An eye-popping nine prospective jurors raised their hands indicating “yes.” This caused an audible gasp in the over-flow courtroom.

The potential jurors were asked by Judge Wood if they “had strong opinion one way or another about nuclear weapons.” Not one raised a hand. The judge then asked if any of the 78 felt “any moral or philosophical opposition to US possession of nuclear weapons.” Again, not one hand was raised.

While the seven defendants have spent whole lifetimes voluntarily studying, educating and criticizing nuclear weapons, 12 from this pool would be their “peers.”

Second, regarding the chance of a fair hearing, Judge Godbey Wood ruled that out late Friday, October 18th, 60 hours before trial. That night the judge issued her order granting the government prosecutor’s motion in limine.

For newcomers to nuclear weapons protest trials, motion “in limine” is a request by the prosecutor to keep certain evidence, testimony, and information away from the jury.

In particular, a motion in limine regularly forbids the defendants from presenting evidence about the effects of nuclear weapons, the binding treaties that forbid massacres, the treaties that outlaw poison weapons or weapons that do long-term damage to the environment, the laws banning weapons whose effects cross neutral borders, and military and treaty laws that criminalize indiscriminate killing of civilians.

In other words the motion, if granted, eliminates the protesters’ chance to argue that nonviolent actions against nuclear war preparations are acts of “crime prevention,” the “defense of others,” or even “self-defense” under international law.

Judge Lisa Godbey Wood granted the motion and even included this her summation: “whether nuclear weapons are actually illegal under international or domestic law (a doubtful proposition) is not relevant or an appropriate issue to litigate in this case.”

In a similar case in Wisconsin, the Seventh US Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in 2002, “Even if it were contrary to international law for a nation to possess nuclear weapons, domestic law could properly and does make it a crime ‘to correct a violation of international law by destroying government property.’”

So airtight was the court’s stranglehold on the explanation of the case—and on precisely which words could be used to describe it in court—that the jury reached its complicated verdicts in less than 90 minutes. The 10 women and 2 men were able to eat lunch, vote to choose a foreperson, decipher four complex “verdict forms” for each of the 7 defendants, and then cast votes on 28 separate charges, reaching unanimous verdicts on all 28, all in about 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Since the jury didn’t have to deliberate, you could say the government won a “slam dunk.” Perhaps this could be adopted as an alternative definition for the Latin motion in limine. It means: “Mute the defense case; hold the sentencing first.”

Sentencing for the seven has not yet been scheduled. Six of the seven will be out on bond pending sentencing. Fr. Steve Kelly remains in custody as a result of a hold from a separate protest conviction and for refusing to accept the conditions of monitored release.

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2019

By The Nuclear Resister on August 27, 2019.

On August 26, a federal judge denied all the pre-trial motions of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7. The activists had urged US District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood to dismiss their charges for numerous legal reasons as well as the fact that the hundreds of first-strike nuclear weapons on the submarines based at Kings Bay Naval Base are illegal and immoral.

The judge found the Plowshares activists did establish a case under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act because they were sincerely religiously motivated to challenge the nuclear weapons at the Naval Base. Wood also found that the government’s actions substantially burdened their right to exercise their religious beliefs. However, the judge went on to rule that the government had a compelling interest in keeping unauthorized people out of the base, and the prosecution of the Plowshares activists was the “least restrictive” means of protecting the safety of the base.

The seven activists argued that the government action of bringing multiple and duplicative charges, threatening 25 years in prison, is far from the “least restrictive” option to keep unauthorized people out. On April 4, 2018, the seven activists entered the naval base in St. Mary’s, Georgia. They undertook various nonviolent actions such as pouring blood, hammering on a statue of a Trident II D5 missile, and placing crime scene tape in front of the entrance to a headquarters building.

“We took these actions to say the violence stops here, the perpetual war stops here—at Kings Bay, and all the despair it represents,” said Clare Grady, one of the Plowshares activists. “We took these actions grounded in faith and the belief that Jesus meant what he said when he said, ‘Love your enemies,’ and in so doing offers us our only option for hope.…”

Trial Set for Oct. 21

After denying the disarmament activists’ motions for dismissal, Judge Wood set October 21 for a trial by jury at the federal courthouse in Brunswick, Georgia, in Glynn County on the state’s southeast coastline.

Supporters from throughout the country are expected to attend the trial. Earlier this month nearly 100 people attended events around the Aug. 26 hearing held by Judge Wood, who also presided over the October trial.

For more info., see: https://kingsbayplowshares7.org.

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2019

By Julia Conley for Commondreams on August 14, 2019

Advocates for seven faith-based peace activists are calling on the public to support the group as they fight federal charges and a potential 25-year prison sentence for [symbolically] disarming a nuclear submarine base.

The Kings Bay Plowshares Seven (KBP7) nonviolently “disarmed” the Trident nuclear submarine base in Kings Bay, Georgia, on April 4, 2018. In federal district court August 8, District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood heard the peace advocates’ pre-trial arguments asking her to dismiss the felony and misdemeanor charges against them.

The defendants, Mark Colville, Father Steve Kelly, Elizabeth McAlister, Martha Hennessy, Clare Grady, Patrick Michael O’Neill, and Carmen Trotta, say the federal government violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) when it charged the KBP7 with destruction and depredation of property, trespassing, conspiracy.

The activists say they were acting in the name of their Catholic faith when they cut through fencing and wire at the submarine base and allegedly vandalized a building and static missiles.

“All of my actions and those of my co-defendants have been measured and guided by the principles of nonviolence expressed in Sacred Scripture. I would argue our communal criminal history has been all about upholding the basic tenets of love and providing for the common good,” said O’Neill in his oral argument. “My actions are an extension of my beliefs. This connection between sincerely held religious beliefs and sacramental practice (action) are one and the same.”

Under the RFRA, their lawyers argued, the government is required to take each of the defendants’ beliefs into consideration and to levy the least restrictive charge against the group possible.

“A prosecution on three felonies and a misdemeanor was not close to that standard,” argued attorney Stephanie McDonald, according to The Brunswick News in Brunswick, Georgia.

I’ve been inspired most of my life by people who take the gospel

seriously and live the gospel as a basic truth. If what you believe doesn’t cost you anything, then what is it good for?

—Martin Sheen, actor

Colville said in his argument that the group doubts the government ever considered a punishment less restrictive than the felony and misdemeanor charges and the potential 25-year prison sentence the group now faces.

“Despite being given numerous opportunities, the government has yet to produce any evidence that it ever considered any less-restrictive means of protecting its so-called ‘compelling interest,’ while its own witnesses indicated that there were/are several such means available,” Colville said. “The question this begs, then, is: did the government consider something more restrictive, and then talk themselves down? To this? What exactly could that have been? Is there still some federal statute on the books that allows for a public flogging?”

The KBP7’s case marks the first time the RFRA has been invoked in this way.

In the courtroom August 8, three of the defendants, who have been incarcerated in Georgia, were seeing each other and their codefendants for the first time in 16 months. Colville, Kelly, and McAlister argue that their civil rights have been violated by their prolonged imprisonment, during which they have not had access to in-person legal preparation. [McAlister has since been released pending trial.]

As the KBP7 or their attorneys presented their arguments, the courtroom overflowed with about 60 supporters, with another 25 outside.

Actor and activist Martin Sheen was among the advocates who assembled in the court.

“I’ve been inspired most of my life by people who take the gospel seriously and live the gospel as a basic truth,” Sheen told The Brunswick News. “If what you believe doesn’t cost you anything, then what is it good for? I think that’s the fundamental value of the Plowshares’ action.”

Circulating a petition on social media after the hearing, the KBP7’s support committee called on the public not only to join their call for the government to dismiss the charges, but also to help rebuild the anti-nuclear weapons movement—“that helped disarm the world’s nuclear arsenals from 90,000 down to 15,000 weapons in the 1980s.”

“We who share the moral vision of the Kings Bay Plowshares Seven proclaim our support for their courage and sustained sacrifice and call for the immediate dismissal of all charges against them,” reads the petition, addressed to Attorney General William Barr. “The defendants invite us to act creatively. They invite us to join global coalitions working to promote governments’ adherence to, and full implementation of, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. They also invite us to participate in campaigns for divestment from nuclear weapons as complementary efforts towards the realization of a world free of nuclear weapons.”

A number of global peace advocates and Nobel Peace Laureates are among the signers of the petition, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Medea Benjamin, and Poor People’s Campaign leaders Rev. William Barber and Rev. Liz Theoharis.

—Julia Conley is a staff writer for Commondreams, which published this piece August 14, 2019.