By Joy First
On February 9, 2016 Judge Paul
Curran found me guilty of trespass for walking onto the Air National Guard Base
at Volk Field in Wisconsin on August 26, 2015. I joined eight others who
wanted to deliver a message to Base Commander Colonel David Romuald, demanding
that he immediately end the program of training pilots to operate the Shadow
Drone at Volk Field. Shadow drones are used overseas for reconnaissance,
surveillance, and target acquisition, and so contribute to the deaths of
thousands of innocents through U.S drone warfare. This action came at the
end of the 8-day 90-mile walk organized by Voices for Creative Nonviolence from
Madison to Volk Field.
The trial began as predicted with DA
Solovey calling Juneau County Deputy Sheriff Thomas Mueller who established
that I was at Volk Field on August 26 and that I did cross onto the base after
being told not to.
The following are the questions
that I asked the deputy under cross examination.
What is the purpose of the area
between the gates and the guardhouse?
Response: It is so cars have a place to
line up while waiting to talk to someone in the guardhouse without blocking the
county road.
When is it legal to be there?
Response: When you are a member of the
public waiting to talk to someone in the guardhouse.
Did you ask any of us why we were
there so you would know if we were there for a valid reason, and were therefore
authorized to be there?
Response: No I didn’t.
Why weren’t we allowed to walk to the
guardhouse and state our business?
Response: The sheriff said we should
arrest you when you stepped onto the base.
Why does a military base that is
supposed to be protecting us need to have the Sheriff protect them from
nonviolent dissenters.
Response: I don’t know.
If we are arrested at Camp
McCoy the base security makes the arrest. Whd does the county take this
on at Volk Field?
Response: I don’t know.
I said I had no further
questions. I then asked the DA if the Sheriff was expected today as he
had testified at the other trials. The DA said he was not. I was
disappointed to hear that because the sheriff likely would have been able to
answer my questions. It seems clear we are being discriminated against by
not being allowed to go to the guardhouse when that is what anyone else is able
to do, but I was not a good enough examiner to bring this out with the witness that
was there.
The defense rested and I told the
judge I would like to give a brief statement as testimony, a closing statement,
and then if I was found guilty I wanted to give a sentencing statement. The
judge said that was fine, and I was sworn in and took the stand.
Here is my testimony from the
stand.
As
each of those who came before me said, silence is complicity and so I must
speak out.
I am
testifying that I have a First amendment right to petition my government for a
redress of grievances and that was what I was doing at Volk Field on August 26,
2015.
I am
also testifying that I have an obligation following Nuremberg to speak out when
I see that my government is doing something illegal.
I was
not there on August 25 in order to enter the base without permission, but to
get to the guard house to request a meeting with the base commander to talk
about US drone warfare. I was not there because I wanted to get arrested.
Defendants
have not been permitted to present evidence as to their intent. For
example, Ms. Ellwanger’s statement was completely stricken from the
record and Mr. Timmerman was not allowed to talk about intent.
I
then cited information that we had used to appeal a previous case and said:
However,
according to previous court cases, the “mere omission of any mention of intent
will not be construed as eliminating that element from the crimes
denounced.” The Supreme Court held that a statue’s “silence” on the
mens rea element “does not necessarily suggest that Congress intended to
dispense with a conventional mens rea element.” The Staples
Court importantly added that “some indication of Congressional intent, express
or implied, is required to dispense with mens rea as an element of a
crime.”
I
handed the judge the complete text, which included the court cases cited and
continued:
And our
intention for being there is an important element in this case. We were
not violent. We meant no harm, rather we were there to try to prevent
harm to others and to uphold the law.
When
the police asked us to leave I believed it was my right and my duty to remain.
As
I walked back to the defense table the DA asked if my complete statement could
be stricken from the record. The judge overruled this request, stating
that I included some legal arguments in my statement.
The judge then said that I was found
guilty and started saying I would have to pay the $232 fine when he remembered
that I wanted to make a closing statement. He asked if I still wanted to
make a closing statement and I said that I wasn’t sure if it was relevant since
he already pronounced me guilty.
The judge replied that he had sat
through so many of these cases and heard us talk about our personal beliefs and
convictions about drones and he had heard it all. He said if that was
what I was going to talk about he didn’t want to hear it, but that if I had
something else to say he would listen and if necessary vacate the
sentence.
So I read the following as my
closing statement:
I
am here before you today because I cannot and will not remain silent as our
government continues to engage in drone warfare which is illegal and
immoral. I did not go to Volk Field on August 25, 2015 to break the law;
rather I was there to uphold the law. This is not a simple trespassing
case.
Testimony was given that I, as a
committed and concerned U.S. citizen, was there exercising my First Amendment
rights, and following my obligations under Nuremberg. I went to Volk
Field not with the intention of getting arrested, but rather to try to meet
with the base commander, who has never answered a letter from us.
I was not there to engage in
unlawful activities. I am a person of nonviolence, involved in
Constitutionally-protected speech. My intent was to seek to influence the
commander, wake him up and affect his conscience, hardly an offense that I
should have been arrested for.
You have heard testimony that when the
police told me I had to leave, it was my right and my duty to refuse that
order. I acted in a nonviolent manner, and I had the right and
responsibility to remain and continue my request for a meeting.
You have heard that I was acting under
the First Amendment which gives us the right to peaceably assemble, speak out,
and petition our government for a redress of long-standing grievances.
You have heard that I was following my
citizen obligations under Nuremberg and other international law.
According to the Nuremberg Principles,
if we remain silent while our government is engaged in illegal and immoral
activities, then we are complicit, we are equally guilty of being in violation
of international law and of going against our most dearly held values. It
is our responsibility as citizens, as taxpayers, as voters, as prosecutors, as
judges to speak out. Robert Jackson, the United States judge at the
Nuremberg trials said, “The very essence of the Nuremberg Charter is that
individuals have international duties which transcend national obligations of
obedience imposed by the individual state.”
I will not, indeed, I cannot, be
complicit when our government has gone so astray. It is my responsibility
as a citizen of this great country to call attention to the unjust actions of
our government and demand that they stop now. I believe that I can make a
difference, that I have made a difference, and you can too. Please, look
into your heart and see that I was doing what I was called to do, and that I
did so peacefully, and now you have the opportunity to find me not guilty of
trespass.
You have said that you have no
authority over our foreign policy, but if a judge in Juneau County finds me
innocent, it would make a difference and people would pay attention.
At the Hancock AFB in New York
resisters were acquitted because the judge said they intended to uphold the
law, not break it. We were at Volk Field on August 25 to uphold the law.
I ask that you please find me not
guilty as charged and join me in saying that we need to stop arresting,
detaining, and prosecuting nonviolent people of good will and conscience who
take action for peace and justice.
Thank you for your time and attention
to this case.
I finished and Judge Curran again
pronounced me guilty. He said that what I was asking him to do was very
dangerous. He cannot let me off because he likes me or agrees with
me. That would set a very dangerous precedent. He can’t let his
personal beliefs affect his rulings as he picks and chooses which laws to obey
and which not to obey. He is bound and sworn to follow the law.
The trial lasted 18 minutes.
Curran left the courtroom without giving me a chance to give a sentencing
statement as I had requested. Again, he is sick of us and does what he
can to shut us down. His argument at the end makes no sense. He IS
picking and choosing which laws to obey when finds us guilty. He is
ignoring the constitutional law of our First Amendment rights. He is
ignoring international law, including Nuremberg, the UN Charter, the Geneva
Conventions – all of which make U.S. drone warfare illegal.
Afterwards, I realized that I should
have added something to my closing. I should have pointed out that Deputy
Mueller said that members of the public are allowed to pass through the gate
and proceed to the guardhouse to request permission to enter the base. If
that is the case, why were we arrested at the gate without being asked what our
business was at the base? Why are we not being given the same rights as
other members of the public?
As so many of my activist friends say,
“You do not find justice in the courtroom.” There was no justice for me
today, but more importantly, there is certainly no justice for the thousands of
people whose lives have been destroyed because of U.S. drone warfare. We
continue with two more trials for our Volk Field action – Phil on February 19
and Mary Beth on February 25.
Donations
can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared
the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has
had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to
gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
No comments:
Post a Comment