[Ppnews] The Age of Conspiracy Charges
Political Prisoner News
ppnews at freedomarchives.org
Thu Jul 29 10:09:39 EDT 2010
The Age of Conspiracy Charges
http://crimethinc.com/texts/recentfeatures/conspiracy.php
Looking back over the past decade, it appears
that North American law enforcement agencies are
increasingly utilizing conspiracy charges to
target anarchists and others involved in radical
communities. Weve composed
<http://crimethinc.com/texts/recentfeatures/conspiracy.php#a>a
review of recent conspiracy cases in hopes of analyzing this.
If conspiracy charges are becoming central to the
state's strategy against anarchists, it is
imperative that we develop a strategy of our own
to respond to this and seize the initiative
rather than simply reacting over and over to
individual cases. This text is a humble effort in
that direction, in hopes of inspiring more
thoughtful reflections from our comrades.
Conspiracy charges are convenient for police and
federal agents in that they do not require
authorities to prove that any actual illegal
activity took place, only shared intent. In that
regard, they are an ideal weapon to wield against
ideologically-based communities; they also lend
themselves to
<http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2009/06/24/towards-a-collective-security-culture/>government
agents efforts to entrap naïve activists.
<http://friendsoftortuga.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/a-new-year-a-new-tortuga-house-update/>There
are also signs that the authorities may be
attempting to fabricate evidence for larger
conspiracy cases on a national scale. Its
impossible to know whether these will ever pan
out, but its certainly better to be prepared.
What can we do to respond to this strategy of
repression? Here are some basic starting places:
1. Dont let the state intimidate us out of confrontational public organizing.
The state targets public organizers like the
<http://shac7.com/>SHAC 7 or the
<http://crimethinc.com/texts/recentfeatures/rnc8.org>RNC
8 because they are effective. Public organizing
groups have been essential in creating the
necessary conditions for anarchists to determine
the character of recent mobilizations such as
those against the
<http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/atoz/rncdnc.php>2008
Republican National Convention and the G20
summits of
<http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/atoz/g202.php>2009
and
<http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/recentfeatures/toronto2.php>2010.
The same goes for local and ongoing campaigns.
Even when it is framed as a strategic choice,
retreating from public organizing can only play
into the hands of the authorities. Repression is
intended to cause militants to back away from
engaging with the public, losing connection with
a broader social base and deepening the false
dichotomy between passive community organizing
and clandestine direct action. This is not to say
everyone must organize publiclyon the contrary,
one function of public organizing is to prepare a
favorable ground for more generalized and
anonymous actionsbut that it is a necessary aspect of anarchist struggle.
2. Minimize our vulnerability to conspiracy charges.
There are many ways we can do this. Perhaps the
most obvious is to
<http://crimethinc.com/texts/recentfeatures/security.php>practice
appropriate security culture, sharing sensitive
information on a need-to-know basis and doing our
best to keep informants out of our circles.
Security culture is not only for those who may be
party to illegal activity; it is important for
everyone connected to networks that the state is
interested in mapping or disrupting. Some
hypothesize that one of the reasons the
authorities didnt bring conspiracy charges
against organizers of the
<http://crimethinc.com/texts/recentfeatures/g202.php>Pittsburgh
G20 protests was that, in contrast to the RNC
Welcoming Committee, individuals suspected of
being police agents were not permitted into the
coordinating group. The closer informants are to
us, the easier it is for them to prepare cases of
some kind, however fabricated.
Likewise, its important to keep an eye out for
<http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2009/06/24/towards-a-collective-security-culture/>federal
bounty hunters preying on naïve young activists.
Often they prefer to target the least experienced
or connected individuals in a social milieu
instead of tangling with longtime militants. We
can also inoculate ourselves against disruption
by sorting out internal conflicts before they
offer infiltrators or prosecutors opportunities
to divide us against each other.
After so many conspiracy cases have been brought
against anarchists, we should no longer be
surprised by new ones. We need to be thinking in
advance about how to respond to them; that means
preparing legal support structures and bail funds
even when we dont have reason to believe were
about to be targeted. It also means being
intentional about how we conduct ourselves so we
dont make it easier for prosecutors to demonize
us. In the words of grand jury resister
<http://davenportgrandjury.wordpress.com/>Carrie Feldman,
Does whatever value I gained from wearing an
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Liberation_Front>ALF
shirt in high school outweigh the fact that it
was later used to smear me in court and justify
holding me in jail for four months? Mostly I just
want to say, yeah, fuckem. Bring it on. But I
think the important thing is to always be
weighing that, be aware of it. Be ready to own
everything you say and do. Dont just front or
talk a militant line to sound cool. When youre
reading about it in your FBI file youll want to
have said things worth standing by.
Whenever someone is targeted with a politically
motivated conspiracy case, its important that we
mobilize the very best legal defense we can. This
means hiring good lawyers, not just accepting
lazy and often outright backstabbing
court-appointed defenders. Every conspiracy case
against radicals sets a precedent for more of the
same; defending one of us is literally defending
all of us. Good lawyers serve two functions.
First, they intimidate the state, which will be
more likely to bargain or drop charges if it
knows pressing them will be expensive and risky.
Second, they can win cases or get them thrown
out, as recently occurred in the case of the
<http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/aeta-4-case-thrown-out-dismissed/3015/>AETA
4. Raising the money to defend one person
effectively can save a lot more money and heartache in the long run.
Public support campaigns are equally important.
On one side, this means going public when you are
targetedboth so you can receive support and so
that repression will be brought into the
spotlight. On the other, it means organizing
long-term support for defendants, so they will
feel invested in answering to the community and
so the authorities will have to factor in public
relations challenges when they consider whether
to target us. Support campaigns can target the
most vulnerable individuals in the power
structure; the supporters of the
<http://crimethinc.com/texts/recentfeatures/rnc8.org>RNC
8 did this by concentrating on county attorney
Susan Gaertner, who was eventually forced to
<http://rnc8.org/2009/04/terrorism-dropped-conspiracy-remains/>drop
the terrorism charges against the defendants.
Finally, though this should go without saying, we
can protect ourselves from conspiracy charges
simply by not cooperating with the authorities.
Of the cases detailed below, many of them would
never have gotten off the ground if people had
not been intimidated into making statements
against their former comrades. Nobody talks,
everybody walksthat goes for our whole community
as well as specific groups of defendants.
Defendants who cooperate with the government
never come out ahead. As detailed below and
elsewhere, not only do they lose friends and
community support, they rarely get significantly
shorter sentencesand doing prison time is much harder as an informant.
3. Craft an effective narrative discrediting the
state's use of conspiracy charges and circulate it to the general public.
If the authorities come to rely on pressing
conspiracy charges against anarchists as a
central strategy of repression, we must take
advantage of the ways this makes them vulnerable.
Many in our societyand not just radicalsare
uncomfortable with the idea of people being
persecuted for thought crime. We need to find
ways to address people outside our social and
political circles about the prevalence of
conspiracy charges, so as to utilize this
opportunity to discredit the state and
delegitimize conspiracy-based cases. The broader
the range of people who disapprove of this
tactic, the more the hands of the authorities will be tied.
Most of this work has yet to be done. If you are
concerned about government repression, consider
the ways you can approach others outside radical communities about this issue.
When we talk about conspiracy charges and witch
hunts, its important to emphasize that were
talking about the state, which exists to carry
out violent repression. As long as there are
inequalities and injustices, there will be
resistance, and those in power will attempt to
repress it. If we take ourselves seriously as a
revolutionary movement, we need to see ourselves
in the larger context and histories of resistance
movements and the repression they have faced; we
would do well to learn both from the successes
and the failures of the past. Its also important
to remember that repression is a daily fact of
life for countless people in communities on the
wrong end of power and privilege; anarchists are
far from exceptional in this regard.
Appendix: An Incomplete Review of Recent Conspiracy Cases
This is hardly a comprehensive survey of
conspiracy charges pressed against anarchists and
other radicals in recent history. However, it
does cover some of the landmark cases that
created the current context, as well as ongoing
cases that will set important precedents.
Altogether, this review encompasses charges
pressed against nearly a hundred individuals. The
cases themselves vary from fairly conventional
uses of conspiracy charges to outright entrapment
and examples that stretch the legal definition of
conspiracy even by prosecutors standards.
2004
<http://shac7.com/>The SHAC 7
In the early days of the 21st century, although
several hearings before Congress had brought
governmental pressure to bear against the animal
liberation movement, efforts to quash direct
action organizing by capturing and prosecuting
participants proved fruitless. Finally, a New
Jersey federal grand jury indicted seven
individuals and the organization
<http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/atoz/shac.php>Stop
Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA on charges of
animal enterprise terrorism under the
<http://abolishtheaeta.org/web/>Animal Enterprise
Protection Act on May 26, 2004. Charges of
interstate stalking and conspiracy to use a
telecommunications device to harass others were
also included in the indictment. It has been said
that the defendants were essentially targeted for
running a website advocating direct action.
The SHAC 7 were convicted on March 2, 2006 under
the AETA. Their conviction probably emboldened
law enforcement agencies to utilize conspiracy
charges to target radicals nationwide, especially
in cases in which simple criminal charges could
not be pressed convincingly or did not appear to offer enough of a deterrent.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Coronado>Rod Coronado
On December 2, 2004, federal prosecutors indicted
Rod Coronado on conspiracy charges related to a
local environmental group interfering with
mountain lion hunting in Sabino Canyon in March
2003. The indictment came just seven days before
Coronado was to stand trial for three lesser
misdemeanor charges filed after his arrest in
Sabino Canyon on March 26. The new charge carried
a maximum penalty of six years in prison.
Coronado faced this among many other charges in a
concerted campaign of harassment across several
years. On December 13, 2005, he and codefendant
Matthew Crozier were found guilty of felony
conspiracy to interfere with or injure a
government official, misdemeanor interference
with or injury to a forest officer, and
misdemeanor depredation of government property.
Coronado was sentenced on August 6, 2006 to eight
months in prison, three years supervised
probation, and fined $100. Crozier was sentenced
to 100 hours community service, three years probation, and a $1000 fine.
2005
<http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/atoz/greenscared.php>Operation Backfire
In December 2005 and January 2006, with
assistance from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), the FBI indicted
six women and seven men on a total of 65 charges,
including arson, conspiracy, use of destructive
devices, and destruction of an energy facility.
The defendants were named as Joseph Dibee (still
at large), Chelsea Dawn Gerlach, Sarah Kendall
Harvey (née Kendall Tankersley),
<http://www.supportdaniel.org/>Daniel McGowan,
Stanislas Meyerhoff, Josephine Overaker (still at
large), <http://www.supportjonathan.org/>Jonathan
Paul, Rebecca Rubin (still at large), Suzanne
Savoie, Justin Solondz (currently
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/world/asia/28china.html?_r=2&hpw>in
custody in China),
<http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2007/12/22/on-darren-thurston%E2%80%99s-statement-%E2%80%9Cfired-back%E2%80%9D/>Darren
Thurston, Kevin Tubbs, and
<http://www.supportbriana.org/>Briana Waters (not
charged with conspiracy). A number of other
unindicted co-conspirators were also named,
including Jacob Ferguson, Jen Kolar, and Lacey
Philabaum, all of whom joined Meyerhoff, Gerlach,
Harvey, Savoie, Tubbs, and Thurston in accepting
plea deals in return for informing to the
government. Another alleged co-conspirator,
William Rodgers, committed suicide while in
police custody. Nathan Block and Joyanna Zacher
were added in a superseding indictment in June 2006.
2006
<http://supporteric.org/>Eric McDavid
In January 2006, as a result of a separate
investigation but widely reported as an extension
of Operation Backfire, three more
individualsEric McDavid, Zachary Jenson, and
Lauren Weinerwere arrested in Auburn, California
for conspiring to damage facilities by explosive
or fire. Jenson and Weiner took cooperating plea
bargains, selling out McDavid, who was convicted
on all counts September 27, 2007 and was
sentenced in May 2008 to nearly 20 years in prison.
The McDavid case is notable because of the role
of a paid informant, Anna, who essentially
entrapped the defendants by utilizing money and
flirtation to lure them into discussions about
illegal activity. It subsequently received
<http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2008/04/22/elle-magazine-retraction-or-hoax/>coverage
in Elle magazine among other venues.
<http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/06/360368.shtml>Sadie and Exile
Nathan Fraser Block, aka Exile, and Joyanna
Lynn Zacher, aka Sadie, were arrested in
February 2006 in Olympia, Washington in
connection to the Jefferson Poplar Farm fire
which occurred in 2001 in Clatskanie, Oregon.
In November 2006, Joyanna Zacher and Nathan Block
each pled to one count of conspiracy, attempted
arson, plus multiple arson charges from actions
at the Joe Romania Chevrolet car dealership in
Eugene and the Jefferson Poplar tree farm, as
part of a global resolution agreement with
prosecutors in the Operation Backfire case.
Daniel McGowan and Jonathan Paul entered plea
deals in the same hearing, resolving all the
outstanding Operation Backfire cases. All four
defendants refused to assist in government
investigations of other activists. It is worth
noting that, compared to the cooperating
defendants in the Backfire case (see chart, as a
<http://crimethinc.com/texts/images/green_scare_chart.gif>GIF
or
<http://crimethinc.com/texts/images/green_scare_chart.pdf>PDF),
the non-cooperating defendants received proportionately shorter sentences.
2007
<http://www.freethesf8.org/>The San Francisco 8
Eight Black community activists, including former
Black Panthers, were arrested January 23, 2007 on
charges related to the 1971 killing of a San
Francisco police officer. Similar charges were
thrown out after it was revealed that police had
used torture to extract confessions when some of
the same men were arrested in New Orleans in 1973.
Richard Brown, Richard O'Neal, Ray Boudreaux, and
Hank Jones were arrested in California. Francisco
Torres was arrested in Queens, New York. Harold
Taylor was arrested in Florida. Herman Bell and
Jalil Muntaqimhad already been held as political
prisoners for over 30 years in New York State
prisons. The men were charged with the murder of
Sgt. John Young and conspiracy encompassing
numerous acts between 1968 and 1973. Bail amounts
were originally set between three and five million dollars each.
Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim were sentenced to
probation and time served, after Bell agreed to
plead to voluntary manslaughter and Muntaqim to
conspiracy to voluntary manslaughter. All charges
were then dropped against Brown, Jones, Taylor,
and Boudreaux, with the prosecution admitting it
had insufficient evidence against them. Charges
had already been dropped against O'Neal in 2008.
Francisco Torres is the last one still facing
charges; he maintains his innocence and will appear in court on September 17.
2008
<http://supportmariemason.org/>Marie Mason
In March 2008, Marie Mason, Frank Ambrose, Aren
Burthwick, and Stephanie Lynne Fultz were
<http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,336931,00.html>arrested
and charged with conspiracy to commit arson;
Mason and Ambrose faced additional charges
related to acts of property destruction that
occurred in 1999 and 2000. It came out that
Ambrose, Masons ex-husband, had been assisting
the FBI extensively in investigating
environmental organizing since 2007; despite
this, his plea bargain resulted in a
<http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20081021200843765>nine
year sentence, two years more than the prosecutor
had requested. Burthwick and Fultz also
negotiated cooperating deals with the Justice
Department, agreeing to help in the investigation
of Mason. Mason was threatened with a life
sentence before
<http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20080914205631210>accepting
a plea bargain in September 2008, in which she
also admitted involvement in 12 other acts
totaling more than $2.5 million of property damage.
Mason was sentenced on February 5, 2009 in
federal court in Lansing, Michigan. She received
almost 22 years, the longest sentence of any
<http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/green-scare/>Green
Scare prisoner. The sentence is currently being appealed.
<http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/article-4488-forest-for-the-trees.html>Rhinelander
Bryan Rivera, aka Bryan Lefey, was arrested July
2008 on charges relating to a July 2000 Earth
Liberation Front action at the U.S. Forest
Service Facility in Rhinelander, WI, where
genetic research was being conducted on trees.
Katherine Christianson was originally named as a
co-conspirator. Government informant
<http://snitchwire.blogspot.com/2009/03/snitch-ian-wallace-sentenced-to-three.html>Ian
Wallace, who was cooperating in investigations
into other ELF actions, got involved and named
Aaron Ellringer and Daniel McGowan as additional
co-conspirators. Christianson and Ellringer
eventually became government informants. All were
convicted; Ellringer received four days,
Christianson 2 years, Lefey 3 years, Wallace 3
years for this and related actions.
Green Scare prisoner
<http://www.supportdaniel.org/>Daniel McGowan,
already serving a 7 year sentence, had also been
involved in the Rhinelander action, but was not
prosecuted federally for it as stipulated in his
2006 non-cooperating plea agreement. McGowan
steadfastly refused to cooperate in the
Rhinelander investigation, and in summer 2008 his
federal sentence was suspended for a brief time
while he was held in civil contempt for refusing
to testify before a grand jury about the action.
<http://rnc8.org/>The RNC 8
In what was the first use of criminal charges
under the 2002 Minnesota version of the Federal
Patriot Act, Ramsey County prosecutors charged
eight alleged organizers of protests against the
<http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/atoz/rncdnc.php>2008
Republican National Convention with Conspiracy to
Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism. The 8 faced up
to seven and a half years in prison under the
terrorism enhancement associated with the charge,
which allows for a 50% increase in the maximum
penalty. They later received more
chargesconspiracy to commit property damage,
conspiracy to commit property damage in
furtherance of terrorism, conspiracy to riot, and the original charge.
In early April 2009,
<http://rnc8.org/2009/04/terrorism-dropped-conspiracy-remains/>county
attorney Susan Gaertner dropped the charges of
Conspiracy to Commit Riot in Furtherance of
Terrorism and Conspiracy to Commit Criminal
Damage to Property in Furtherance of Terrorism.
This occurred shortly after one of the defendants
appeared on MSNBC and petitions to drop all the
charges were delivered to Gaertners office,
including a resolution from the 17,000-member
Duluth Central Labor Body in support of the RNC 8.
The terrorism charges were dropped as a direct
result of a political pressure campaign against
Gaertner, who had pressed the charges and was
running for governor at the time. After protests
at all of her campaign events and various other
disruptions, Gaertners name became synonymous
with the RNC 8 to such an extent that eventually
she had to adopt The courage to do the right
thing even when it is politically unpopular as a
campaign slogan. When Gaertner dropped the
terrorism charges, she explained to a local paper
that the terrorism charges would be distracting
and a disaster at trial. This was not enough to
save her campaign; she later dropped out of the governors race entirely.
Significantly, no conspiracy charges were filed
against organizers of protests against the
<http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/atoz/g202.php>2009
G20 summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This
seems to indicate that the support campaign for
the RNC 8 was successful enough to discourage the
state from attempting the same strategy, although
it was surely caused by factors in Pittsburgh as
well. The latter may include the willingness of
the organizing group to exclude suspicious
individuals and hesitance on the part of local
officials to go after well-connected activists.
The other two conspiracy charges remain pending
against the RNC 8. The trial will begin on October 25, 2010.
2009
<http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/aeta-arrests/1070/>AETA 4
On February 19 and 20, 2009, the Joint Terrorism
Task Force of the FBI arrested
<http://aeta4.org/>Joseph Buddenberg, Maryam
Khajavi, Nathan Pope, and Adriana Stump; they
were charged with conspiracy to violate the
Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act for protest
activity relating to home demonstrations in which
they wrote on a sidewalk with chalk, among other things.
A judge dismissed the case without prejudice in
July 2010 on the grounds that the government
didnt give enough specifics on the alleged criminal activity:
In order for an indictment to fulfill its
constitutional purposes, it must allege facts
that sufficiently inform each defendant of what
it is that he or she is alleged to have done that
constitutes a crime. This is particularly
important where the species of behavior in
question spans a wide spectrum from criminal
conduct to constitutionally protected political
protest. While true threats enjoy no First
Amendment protection, picketing and political
protest are at the very core of what is protected by the First Amendment.
Because the case was dismissed without prejudice,
the government can re-indict the defendants; it
is unclear whether this will occur.
<http://www.mostlyeverything.net/>Hugh and Tiga
Gina Tiga Wertz and Hugh Farrell were arrested
on April 24, 2009 by Indiana state authorities
and charged with multiple counts of intimidation,
conversion, and corrupt business influence, a
felony racketeering charge, for their involvement
in protests against I-69. The felony racketeering
charge was later dismissed. Both pled July 2010
to misdemeanor charges and received 15 months probation.
<http://www.supportkevin.org>Kevin Olliff
Kevin Olliff was arrested in April 2009 on state
charges for protest-related activity against UCLA
vivisectors three years earlier; he faced 10
felony charges including multiple counts of
stalking, conspiracy, conspiracy to stalk, and
threatening of a public servant. Olliff did not
make bail and stayed in jail for almost a year
before he pled to six of the ten felony counts
against him in March 2010 in a non-cooperating plea agreement.
<http://davenportgrandjury.wordpress.com/>Carrie Feldman and Scott DeMuth
Carrie Feldman was subpoenaed to a federal grand
jury in Davenport, Iowa in October 2009. She read
a statement of non-cooperation and pled the 5th
Amendment, and was re-subpoenaed for November.
Scott DeMuth was subpoenaed to appear with her,
and the two were both jailed for civil contempt
on account of refusing to answer questions.
Scott DeMuth was indicted for conspiracy to
violate the AETA days later, and was released
pending trial; Feldman was jailed for four
months, during which time her case received
public attention. She was eventually released
because her testimony is no longer needed.
DeMuths trial is scheduled to begin September 13, 2010.
2010
<http://asheville11defense.com/>The Asheville 11
Eleven people were arrested on May 1, 2010 in
Asheville, NC, accused of doing $20,000 worth of
damage to downtown businesses. Each was charged
with 3 felonies (felony riot, felony conspiracy
to riot, felony damage to property) and 10
misdemeanors (one was charged with 11). Initially
set at $10,000, bail was ratcheted up to $65,000
apiece as the authorities implemented
anti-anarchist scare tactics in the media and
court system. Their trial dates have yet to be set.
<http://www.counterpunch.org/gelderloos07072010.html>Toronto G20
Sixteen people were arrested and charged with
conspiracy on account of the protests against the
<http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/recentfeatures/toronto2.php>G20
summit in Toronto, Canada. Although this is
occurring in Canada, the Canadian government is
clearly hoping to utilize the conspiracy model
pioneered in the SHAC 7 and RNC 8 cases to
terrorize dissidents involved in laying the
framework for the most intense protests Ontario
has seen thus far this century. As of now, little
information is available about the Toronto G20
charges; the government is not releasing any
information, and lawyers appear to be advising
the defendants to proceed extremely carefully.
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
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