More! Wonderful OREPA Report on Y12 Resister's Trial after 2 days - - 3 CWers among them: Steve Baggarly - Norfolk VR , Mike Walli - Wash DC and Fr Bill Bichsel - Tacoma WA
Frank Cordaro
them: Steve Baggarly - Norfolk VR , Mike Walli - Wash DC and Fr Bill
Bichsel - Tacoma WA
http://groups.google.com/group/National-CW-E-mail-List/browse_thread/thread/4392027aaa1df2d0?hl=en
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Felice & Jack Cohen-Joppa <nukere...@igc.org>
Date: Tue, May 10, 2011
With Enemies Like This, Who Needs Friends? or Day Two of the Y12 Resisters Trial
by Ralph Hutchison
On March 4, 2011, Judge Bruce Guyton heard arguments about
the government's motion to limit the testimony that Y12 resisters
could give at their trial for crossing the line at the Y12 Nuclear
Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. On April 29, he issued his
ruling granting the government's motion and precluding defendants from
making any arguments related to international law, necessity, nuclear
weapons policy, their religious faith, morals or good motives. The
government got virtually everything it wanted‹the judge had put a gag
over the mouths of the defendants.
And then, for reasons that may never be known, the
government took the gag off. The first government witness, Ted Sherry,
site manager of the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex, took the stand and,
in a matter of minutes, mentioned deterrence, US nuclear policy, and
nonproliferation, opening the door for the defense to talk about these
things. By the end of the day Tuesday, the second day of the trial,
they still hadn¹t managed to shut the door.
It was astonishing to see a US prosecutor, who had worked
hard to make sure the defendants were not allowed to speak of their
faith or religious motivation, ask Father Bill Bichsel if he was
familiar with the Bible verse that spoke of plowshares. Could he quote
it exactly? she asked. By the time she got another word in, Bix had
quoted the verse and was halfway through the homily.
That was just one in a string of prosecutorial actions
that provided opportunities for defense lawyers, and two pro se
defendants, to tell the jury about the weapons of mass destruction
manufactured at Y12, and their conscientious action to address this
threat to creation.
Questioning the Wackenhut employee who testified about the
preparations for the demonstration, the prosecutor asked him what was
hanging from the fence and he said, "I think it's called origami." A
few minutes later, Steve Baggarly stepped to the podium to for a final
cross examination.
Steve: Mr. Seals, are you aware that origami is Japanese
paper folding?
Answer: I guess at some point I knew that.
Steve: Are you aware that this is a picture of a peace
crane, named after a Japanese girl named Sadako Sasaki, who was in
Hiroshima, Japan when the atomic bomb was dropped, and...
He never took a breath to allow an objection; in three
minutes Steve unspooled the powerful story of Sadako and her leukemia
and her thousand cranes and how others took up her dream as a symbol
of the hopes of the work for peace and, on May 10, 2011, Sadako Sasaki
came into a courtroom in Knoxville, Tennessee, and was present with
the judge and the jury and the federal marshals and the defendants and
the lawyers and the spectators and more than one eye was full of
tears. It was a moment.
There were many moments. In the morning, as the marshals
brought Bill Bichsel into the courtroom (he is in custody for the
Disarm Now Plowshares action at the Kitsap Bangor Naval Base,
Washington), the audience stood and sang "Keep Your Eyes on the
Prize." By the time we were on the third verse of "Ain¹t Gonna Study
War No More," the marshals were in the courtroom, furious, waving
arms to silence us. We finished the verse. She admonished us, at the
order of the judge, and forbade future singing‹the jury could hear it
in its jury room outside the courtroom.
The trial began Monday with a procession to the courthouse
through downtown Knoxville; led by Buddhist drumming and chanting,
accompanied by giant peace crane banners and stilt walkers, the
defendants made their way to the courthouse. Jury selection was long
and tedious and let us know what we were facing. Of thirty-one
prospective jurors, all but four said they had guns in their homes.
None had ever written a letter to the editor; one had participated in
a public demonstration (the Tea Party), none admitted to ever having
contributed to a group espousing a political objective, one had ever
written a letter to a public official (a few, over the years, but he
could not recall the subject of any of them). Two or three said they
believed they would have not returned slaves to their owners had they
lived in the days of the fugitive slave act‹the rest would hand them
over. One's answer to a question about Jehovah's Witnesses refusal to
take an oath to the Reich leading to the extermination of hundreds of
thousands said, "Well, if they were going to live in Germany"
Brad Lyttle spoke of Franz Jaegerstatter who refused to
serve in the Nazi Army and the prospective jurors were quizzed about
the Boston Tea Party which, as it turns out, would not have ended well
for Sam Adams and the others had they faced this jury, especially
since the penalty for treason was death. "I never really thought about
it," was the popular introduction as each juror was polled‹it would
not have strained a prosecutor then to find twelve jurors and another
dozen alternates to try the Boston hooligans. Some tried to think it
through in terms of property, but in the end most said "Guilty; it was
wrong to break the law." One brave person declared he would have been
there with them, but would have expected to have been found guilty
(and executed, one presumes).
Eventually we reached the trial itself, opening
statements, and the first witness, Ted Sherry, who sailed through
questions, waxing eloquent on Y12¹s important mission and outlined the
details of the resisters action on a giant map which, as the defense
noted, did not meet the rules of evidence. "I'll allow it," Judge
Guyton said. Sherry¹s testimony closed the day.
On Tuesday, after our pre-court singing and the passing
around of a special greeting from the Nuclear Resister, we began cross
examination. Within a minute of questioning about the history of Oak
Ridge, the government objected. "Your honor," said our attorney, Brad
Henry, "He testified about Oak Ridge's history yesterday." "I'll
allow it," said the judge, noticing, if he hadn't before, that his
carefully prepared streetcar to justice was coming off the rails. By
the end of the day, when the prosecutor asked Bill Bichsel about the
Bible, the judge was leaning forward, hands clasped in front of him
and his chin resting on them. He glared at Melissa Milliken and said,
his lips taut, "It¹s. your. question. Counselor. Are you going to
repeat it or withdraw it?"
Brad Lyttle¹s cross examination discussed in some detail
the hydrogen bomb and the work at Y12; he tried to get Ted Sherry to
say whether the nuclear weapons at Y12 were totally safe or not.
Sherry would not answer unequivocally. He said they were incredibly
safe, due to tremendous safety features. Totally, 100% safe, asked
Brad. Incredibly safe, Sherry repeated.
Steve Baggarly elicited testimony about the new $6.5
billion Uranium Processing Facility and the hair-trigger alert status
of nuclear weapons; pursuing each topic until the prosecutor objected
and was sustained.
During the testimony of the prosecution's second witness,
Wackenhut¹s security office for July 5, 2010, we watched a brief video
of the protest which brought the drumming and chanting of the
Buddhists into the courtroom; for several minutes it was the only
audible sound from the video. After viewing the video and a number of
pictures, Bill Bichsel¹s lawyer Mike Whalen asked Mr. Seals about a
photo showing a phalanx of Tennessee Highway Patrol, dressed in heavy
helmets with face-guards and truncheons ready "If you wanted to keep
people out, why didn't you have these people at the fence before they
crossed over instead of bringing them in after?" The reply was
appropriately odd: the barbed-wire fence that encloses the Y12
property is not to keep people out but to make sure they are aware
they are trespassing if they do.
By mid-afternoon, the first defense witness, Mary Dennis
Lentsch, took the stand. She told of her life and her baptismal
promises and her action at Y12, an expression of her promise to
renounce and resist evil. As she spoke of her religious motivation,
the prosecution remained quiet. When she finally was asked if she felt
she had a choice on July 5, the objection of the prosecutor was
sustained; asked if she felt she was willful, she was cut off again.
Finally, her attorney John Eldridge asked her how she felt in the
courtroom. "feel happy that I did what my conscience calls me to do.
And I feel sad for the court restrictions on what we can tell you,"
she said to the jury. "I took an oath to tell the truth‹the judge cut
her off with a stern admonishment to her lawyer." John listened
patiently as the judge told him to tell admonish his client to respect
the court's order. John said noncommittally, "That is a good
admonishment from the court."
Under cross examination, Jeff Theodore asked Mary Dennis
if she knew she was breaking the law as she crossed the line. "I was
obeying a higher law," she said. When he asked if Mary Dennis had
discussed her intentions with others, ten lawyers leaped to their feet
to object. The judge sustained the objection and said, "I thought
someone had called a recess when everyone stood up."
Then Bix took the stand and spoke of the kingdom of God.
"We pray the Our Father," he said, reciting the words, "and we say
'Thy kingdom come,¹ and we forget it is possible for the kingdom of
heaven to come on earth." The judge sustained an objection to a
question about the Freedom Riders, but in answering the next question
Bix moved quickly to the Freedom Riders and said they did not expect
to end segregation overnight, but they thought others would follow. He
quoted Martin Luther King, Jr.¹s statement that the choice now is
between nonviolence or nonexistence.
At the conclusion of Bix¹s cross-examination, we
adjourned. Tomorrow (Wednesday, May 11) should see testimony from
Steve Baggarly, Dennis DuVall, Brad Lyttle and Beth Rosdatter.
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More information is available from:
Ralph Hutchison at 865 776 5050
or...@earthlink.net
http://orepa.org/