Re: [EWG] Report from the Seneca Lake courtroom last night
K. Shimberg
Read Steingraber's account of the appalling behaviour of the Judge Raymond H Berry. Please write to your legislators to complain -- and also to save Seneca Lake!
There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts. —Mahatma Gandhi
Dear Friends of Seneca Lake,
I write to report the results of last night’s arraignments in the Town of Reading Court.
Scheduled t
oappear were the first two defendants in the second wave of fifteen arrests that took place at the gates of Crestwood on Monday, November 5.Bob Henrie, age 88, of Wayne County and Kenneth Fogarty, age 75, of Chenago County were called to the bench by Judge John D. Norman, Jr. to face one charge each of trespassing.
Then came the shocker. Before either man could say a word, Judge Norman bluntly announced, “I have a conflict of interest because I work at Crestwood.”
Really.
Recusing himself, Norman then ordered the two to appear next week—November 19—before Judge Raymond H. Berry. (Berry alternates with Norman in presiding over weekly Wednesday night court sessions in Reading.)
When Henrie asked if he might ask a question, Norman responded in a gruff and disrespectful tone, "No, you may not."
And with that, we were all ordered out of the room.
Another We Are Seneca Lake defendant—the former Schuyler County legislator, Ruth Young, age 77—approached Judge Norman privately about the status of her own request, made earlier in writing, to change her court date. Young had been ordered to appear before Norman on November 26, the day before Thanksgiving when she had hoped to travel to be with family. Like Fogarty and Henrie, with whom she was arrested, Young was charged with one count of trespassing.
Young told us that Norman angrily denied her request, even though his conflict of interest would presumably prompt the identical decision to defer the case to his counterpart, Judge Berry.
In a statement outside the courthouse, Bob Henrie remarked that tonight’s proceedings made clear that “tribulation, to use a Biblical word, is what we are faced with.”
Tribulation indeed. Last night I saw three remarkable elder citizens—one of whom is a former elected official—treated with disdain and hostility by a black-robed judge whose daytime employer is the very Texas-based gas company that threatens our water, safety, health, wine, and community.
That’s a call to action.
So, let’s act. Sign the Pledge to Protect Seneca Lake. Your signature becomes an invitation to attend a training.
And join us next week, Wednesday, November 19, at the Town of Reading courthouse. Appearing will be no less than sixteen We Are Seneca Lake defendants: nine of us from the first October 29 arrests (seven of whom have contradictory charges that cannot be resolved without the District Attorney, who has, so far, refused to answer phone calls); Bob Henrie and Ken Fogarty thrown over from tonight’s conflict-of-interest-vexed town justice; and the next batch of five defendants arrested on November 3 who were scheduled to appear on the 19th all along.
It should be an amazing show.
All of us need your support. And everyone--inside the Town of Reading courthouse and out--needs to know this: We are Seneca Lake. We are undaunted. The whole world is watching. And this will not stand.
true blue,
Sandra
Bob Henrie, age 88, “I’ve lived in the Finger Lakes for 85 years, and I am in love with every flower and tree in this place. I’m ready to lay down in front of a bulldozer, I really am.”
Kenneth Fogarty, age 75. “I’m in my last quarter on Earth, and it’s time to pay it back. It’s not to be desecrated.”
(both photos:by Charlie Haeffner)
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