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Judge Orders Testing of Evidence in Judi Bari Bombing
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Dan Clore
Apr 4, 2012, 5:01:15 PM4/4/12
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News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/environment/la-me-gs-judge-orders-testing-of-evidence-in-judi-bari-bombing-20120402,0,7835080.story
Judge orders testing of evidence in Judi Bari bombing
by Dean Kuipers
April 2, 2012, 3:13 p.m.
Almost 22 years after Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl
Cherney were car-bombed during a campaign to save old-growth trees, a
federal judge has ordered the FBI to turn over evidence from the bombing
for forensic testing.
In an order dated last Friday but released Monday, Claudia Wilken,
United States district judge of the Northern District of California,
affirmed a March 21, 2011, order by Magistrate Judge James Larson,
directing the United States, through the FBI, to turn over the remnants
of two pipe bombs, cardboard signs and other evidence connected to the
bombing. The items have never been tested for DNA evidence or other
identifying characteristics that could provide leads in the bombing
case, which has never been solved. The items have been in FBI possession
since the bombing two decades ago.
“I predict that we are going to solve the case as to who bombed Judi
Bari this year, and this court ruling takes us one giant step closer,”
said Cherney. He is currently screening his new documentary film about
the case, “Who Bombed Judi Bari?,” which premiered March 2 and played
last week in Santa Monica.
On May 24, 1990, Bari and Cherney were gearing up for a campaign that
came to be called Redwood Summer, which brought thousands of activists
to the timberlands of Northern California to slow the clear-cutting of
commercial forests and to protect a few last stands of old-growth trees,
some of which were thousands of years old. As they drove through Oakland
en route to a Santa Cruz rally that day, a powerful bomb exploded
directly under Bari’s seat in her Subaru wagon, leaving Cherney injured
and Bari seriously wounded.
Her pelvis shattered and spinal cord damaged, Bari woke up in the
hospital to find that she and Cherney were also under arrest for
carrying explosives – essentially, for bombing themselves. Despite a
steady stream of statements released to the press by the FBI and Oakland
Police Department about the wealth of evidence leading to this
conclusion, those charges were never filed. Cherney and Bari, a single
mother of two young girls, filed a civil rights case against the FBI and
Oakland police in 1991.
The pair won their case in 2002 and were awarded a judgment of $4.4
million for false arrest and violation of their 1st Amendment rights.
Bari died of breast cancer in 1997.
Speaking about the order released Monday, Ben Rosenfeld, who helped
litigate the 2002 case, said, “It’s historic, it’s momentous, it means
we have a real chance to find an answer to this attempted murder of Judi
and Darryl.”
Authorities never made any search for the real bomber. Police and
federal law enforcement told the press in 1990 that they refused to look
at suspects other than Bari and Cherney, and when charges were not
forthcoming the case essentially went cold. The two pipe bombs – the one
from Bari’s car and another that was laid at a lumber mill in Cloverdale
a week or so earlier that failed to go off, and which all investigators
agreed was made by the same bomber – were put in storage, along with a
hand-lettered sign left at the Cloverdale mill.
Cherney, Rosenfeld and others point out that the bombs were wrapped in
as much as 6 feet of duct tape, and that a hair or skin cell left on
those materials could be an important break.
“The Cloverdale bomb barely exploded; it dudded more than it detonated.
So it remains mostly intact,” said Rosenfeld. “And bombers didn’t know
to cover their DNA tracks back then the way they do today. So there is
potentially a wealth of DNA and other forensic evidence associated with
those materials. And if anybody still harbored any doubt that the
government has no intention of finding out who bombed Judi Bari, and
worse, that they’re trying to cover that up, the fact that they’re out
to destroy this evidence without ever testing it lays those doubts to rest.”
The recent twists in the case began in September 2010 when the FBI
announced, as required by law, that it would be destroying this
evidence. Two judges have now intervened, both ordering the testing to
be done, but the wrangling might not be over yet. Cherney and his
attorneys must now present the judge with a plan to bring the materials
to a suitable lab, and then the U.S. attorney on the case has 14 days to
file any objections.
--
Dan Clore
New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-unspeakable-and-others/6124911
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
"Don't just question authority,
Don't forget to question me."
-- Jello Biafra
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/environment/la-me-gs-judge-orders-testing-of-evidence-in-judi-bari-bombing-20120402,0,7835080.story
Judge orders testing of evidence in Judi Bari bombing
by Dean Kuipers
April 2, 2012, 3:13 p.m.
Almost 22 years after Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl
Cherney were car-bombed during a campaign to save old-growth trees, a
federal judge has ordered the FBI to turn over evidence from the bombing
for forensic testing.
In an order dated last Friday but released Monday, Claudia Wilken,
United States district judge of the Northern District of California,
affirmed a March 21, 2011, order by Magistrate Judge James Larson,
directing the United States, through the FBI, to turn over the remnants
of two pipe bombs, cardboard signs and other evidence connected to the
bombing. The items have never been tested for DNA evidence or other
identifying characteristics that could provide leads in the bombing
case, which has never been solved. The items have been in FBI possession
since the bombing two decades ago.
“I predict that we are going to solve the case as to who bombed Judi
Bari this year, and this court ruling takes us one giant step closer,”
said Cherney. He is currently screening his new documentary film about
the case, “Who Bombed Judi Bari?,” which premiered March 2 and played
last week in Santa Monica.
On May 24, 1990, Bari and Cherney were gearing up for a campaign that
came to be called Redwood Summer, which brought thousands of activists
to the timberlands of Northern California to slow the clear-cutting of
commercial forests and to protect a few last stands of old-growth trees,
some of which were thousands of years old. As they drove through Oakland
en route to a Santa Cruz rally that day, a powerful bomb exploded
directly under Bari’s seat in her Subaru wagon, leaving Cherney injured
and Bari seriously wounded.
Her pelvis shattered and spinal cord damaged, Bari woke up in the
hospital to find that she and Cherney were also under arrest for
carrying explosives – essentially, for bombing themselves. Despite a
steady stream of statements released to the press by the FBI and Oakland
Police Department about the wealth of evidence leading to this
conclusion, those charges were never filed. Cherney and Bari, a single
mother of two young girls, filed a civil rights case against the FBI and
Oakland police in 1991.
The pair won their case in 2002 and were awarded a judgment of $4.4
million for false arrest and violation of their 1st Amendment rights.
Bari died of breast cancer in 1997.
Speaking about the order released Monday, Ben Rosenfeld, who helped
litigate the 2002 case, said, “It’s historic, it’s momentous, it means
we have a real chance to find an answer to this attempted murder of Judi
and Darryl.”
Authorities never made any search for the real bomber. Police and
federal law enforcement told the press in 1990 that they refused to look
at suspects other than Bari and Cherney, and when charges were not
forthcoming the case essentially went cold. The two pipe bombs – the one
from Bari’s car and another that was laid at a lumber mill in Cloverdale
a week or so earlier that failed to go off, and which all investigators
agreed was made by the same bomber – were put in storage, along with a
hand-lettered sign left at the Cloverdale mill.
Cherney, Rosenfeld and others point out that the bombs were wrapped in
as much as 6 feet of duct tape, and that a hair or skin cell left on
those materials could be an important break.
“The Cloverdale bomb barely exploded; it dudded more than it detonated.
So it remains mostly intact,” said Rosenfeld. “And bombers didn’t know
to cover their DNA tracks back then the way they do today. So there is
potentially a wealth of DNA and other forensic evidence associated with
those materials. And if anybody still harbored any doubt that the
government has no intention of finding out who bombed Judi Bari, and
worse, that they’re trying to cover that up, the fact that they’re out
to destroy this evidence without ever testing it lays those doubts to rest.”
The recent twists in the case began in September 2010 when the FBI
announced, as required by law, that it would be destroying this
evidence. Two judges have now intervened, both ordering the testing to
be done, but the wrangling might not be over yet. Cherney and his
attorneys must now present the judge with a plan to bring the materials
to a suitable lab, and then the U.S. attorney on the case has 14 days to
file any objections.
--
Dan Clore
New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-unspeakable-and-others/6124911
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
"Don't just question authority,
Don't forget to question me."
-- Jello Biafra
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