Attorneys for the Transform Now Plowshares have filed an appeal on their sentence, arguing that the Sabotage laws did not apply in their case and the prosecution erred in bringing up 9/11 in summation.
As you might surmise from reading my blog, I’ve been following the Plowshares movement for quite some time. To my knowledge, this is the first conviction they’ve ever appealed. There was always some fear (understandable imo) that it would be hard to overturn a conviction, and they did not want to set precedent that would make subsequent defendants’ court case more difficult. But as far as I know, this is the first time a Plowshares action has been tried under the Sabotage laws. I will keep you informed.
Two years after Megan Rice, Greg Boertje-Obed and Michael Walli entered the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge, TN to issue an indictment against the continuing production of nuclear weapons components there and to oppose plans for a multi-billion dollar Uranium Processing Facility which would produce thermonuclear cores for US weapons, and fifteen months after their conviction in federal court in Knoxville, TN on charges of sabotage (at which point they were held in jail), and six months after they were sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to five years, lawyers for the Transform Now Plowshares resisters have filed an appeal in the Sixth Circuit court of appeals in Cincinnati, OH challenging the government’s use of the Sabotage Act, and the prosecutions efforts to prejudice the jury by inappropriately presenting testimony of prior offenses and invoking a comparison of the nonviolent demonstrators to 9/11 terrorists.
The appeal (you…
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