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Results of
sentencing:
March 12 2001 Peter, Donna, Bill |
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We're just back from the sentencing hearing and the results are that we have each been sentenced to the maximum fine($500) for our action last August 9 which was an attempted citizen's arrest of General Ralph Eberhart commander of the U.S. Space Command and Air Force Space Command (see: Citizens issue arrest warrant for Gen Ralph (Ed) Eberhart). Judge Gary Seckman did not impose jail time(the maximum could have been 90 days) The entire sentence was stayed (delayed) until the appeal process is final which will likely be several months. I have attached below copies of the sentencing statements of Donna and Bill. Peter's statement has not yet been converted to a useable form for e-mail. We'll send it later. Please let us know if you'd like a copy. Other comments. Prosecutor Victoria Ringleer was not present for sentencing. Some of the comments had been formulated with her presence being presumed. The stand-in from the City Attorney's staff had nothing to say in response to our remarks. But Judge Gary Seckman did. He seemed angry at some of the comments of the three of us and extremely defensive in his remarks. Kept saying that it was all a matter of "different philosophies." His remarks seemed disjointed and not responsive to the points that we made. It would be good to have his actual words in the interest of fairness, but it was not a notable opinion in my estimation. The standard City Court rules allow for a fine to be paid of at $7 per hour of community service. That would men 70+ hours for each of us if we go that route. August 12 is the earliest possible day of reckoning. It could be later if the appeals process is still running its course. The appeal will be very similar to others made around the country. But Colorado does have a unique "public duty statute" that probably not all states have. There is certainly nothing similar in the federal code. Our attorneys Walter Gerash and Sue Tyburski will be preparing the appeal and any help you might be able to offer would be appreciated.
Bill Sulzman
Sentencing Statement
I would like to address my remarks today to Judge Beckman, prosecutor Ringler
and all who attended the trial and have returned today. In my statement
I
will address some of the points that never made it into the trial on February
8 because we were not allowed to present a defense version of events. We
were restricted to telling the jury that "we never intended to break the
law," while not telling them what we did intend to do. A scenario
that
played out over the course of a couple of hours was represented as taking
place in a few minutes. Our attorney was not allowed to cross examine
the
prosecution's own witnesses who on direct testimony described receiving
copies of our arrest warrant and told of hearing our repeated requests to
them that they help serve it. No mention was allowed of our extensive
conversation with Sgt Morgan, General Eberhart's top aide who came by to
discuss the matter with us. There are other details of that extended
period
of time that I do not have time to go into here including a long conversation
with the City Police officers who negotiated an end of the incident.
Instead
let us turn to the core issue:
Nuclear weapons are the key issue left out of the trial.
They were and
are the central reality in this courtroom, the proverbial elephant in the
living room, one might even say the TREX in this courthouse today. I
know
that courts, lawyers and judges have some standard means to wall off nuclear
weapons from consideration but finally there they are right in front of us
threatening to destroy us if we keep pretending that they are not there.
I want to read briefly from three sources that back up what I
have to say
today and what we three had in our minds as we went about our attempted
citizen's arrest of General Eberhart on August 9th.
From Almanac 2000 a
publication of the Air Force Space Command which has a quote from General
Eberhart on the title page:
Page 13 "HQ, 20th Air Force: America's
intercontinental ballistic missile team…of approximately 9000 people based
at
three operational missile units and one operational location, Twentieth Air
Force operates, maintains and ensures the safety, security and combat
readiness of the country's ICBM force. Missile combat crews
perform
around-the clock alerts in underground launch control centers. These two-person crews monitor the status of 500 Minuteman III and 50 Peacekeeper
missiles scattered across 45.000 square miles in parts of Colorado, Montana,
Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming."
And I would like to add some quotes from a lengthy
newspaper cover story
done in the same time frame by the military affairs reporter of the Colorado
Springs Gazette (December 17, 2000): "Air Force Lt. Joe Roth's
office is 75
feet underground, a cramped capsule nested in another capsule that the 27
year old officer likens to 'a yoke inside an egg'... ''below the farmland
formerly used for wheat is a control center where Roth monitors some of the
most powerful weapons in the world-U.S. intercontinental ballistic
missiles."
Later in the story we have a description of the ride down to the underground
command bunker..."As they started an alert earlier this month, Moore and
Roth
flashed identification to the guards outside the (above ground) house, said
hello to those on duty above ground and then rode a cagelike elevator down to
the control center. On its way down, their elevator passed a mural of a
bloodthirsty beast with bright teeth, glow in the dark eyes and a
missile launch key in one claw." Pardon me if I am not amused at
this
attempt at gallows humor. We are talking about doomsday weapons deployed
for
decades and people are joking about it.
Later in the piece we have a quote from Bruce Blair from the
Center for
Defense Information (who at one time worked inside one of these underground
bunkers and inside Cheyenne Mountain)) which offers a critique of the nuclear
war decision making structure as he vividly remembers it. "It is
going to
war by checklist. There is no scope for rational thought and deliberate
leadership."
Finally we get to a description of what the gallows humor and
war by
checklist is all about. For this information the Gazette had to go to
the
Natural Resources Defense Council. The Air Force would not provide that
information. One speculates that is part of the denial process that they
have in common with courts across the country who refuse to deal with this
issue. When launched "the missile reaches its target in about 30
minutes. A
single, typical warhead flattens buildings and kills most people in a 2.5
mile ring from ground zero and starts fires in an area twice that size."
If
we overlay that area on Colorado Springs we are talking about from here to
Jackson street on the north, southgate on the south. Circle Drive to the
east and 21st street to the west. And that is just the immediate
destruction. The fires would rage for days and consume most of the rest
of
the city and radiation exposure would kill tens of thousands in a manner that
would make the living envy the dead. I use this example not thinking
that
Colorado Springs is where these missiles are aimed. It's the 7 countries
on
the current target list that have to worry about this destruction. As I
suggested these brutal horrific facts are what the Air Force and this and
numerous other courts want to deny. That is what the "Robinson
decision"
says is irrelevant. That is what sends people at all levels of our
political
and judicial system to look at their own version of the checklist so they
don't have to face the truth of what they are doing.
To add a personal note I refer to what I did in October 1962
while I was
stationed at Ft. Carson's 19th MP Company and was ordered to guard the motor pool as the nuclear standoff against the Russians took place at the time of
the Cuban missile crisis. When I reflected back on that later I
realized
that I had been complicit in a monstrous war crime even though a nuclear
exchange did not happen at that point. It was in this same time period
that
I first became aware of the fact that the rules of land warfare, contained in
Army Field Manual 27-10 do apply to U.S. soldiers and civilians. I
remember
the basic training session on that subject and later as training clerk of the
19th MP Company I had to run the film on 2 occasions that reviewed the
subject for members of my unit.
A few years later I found myself in a Catholic seminary in Rome
as the
Second Vatican Council issued its condemnation of the nuclear arms race in
all its forms. Thirty-seven years later nothing has changed despite that
condemnation because all the parties involved deal with the subject through
checklists and not reason and deliberation. As with many great evils,
nuclear war is a sin and a crime. My personal opposition comes
from a moral
concern, but I have studied the legal aspects as well.
In closing I want to make two final points:
1. I believe the Robinson decision is not on point for this case
for two
reasons. It was issued before the end of the Cold War and before the ICJ
opinion of 1996. Our expert witness, Dr. Bill Durland who was not
allowed to
testify could have made those points much better than I, but let me say what
is behind my own reasoning. The ICJ opinion dealt with the nuclear
question
before the fact. The reason the opinion was sought was the fact that
International Lawyers correctly concluded that if we wait until after a
nuclear war to declare it illegal, who cares. It's too late.
Civilian
courts would be a luxury at that point. The world needed a legal opinion
ahead of time that addressed possession and threatened use of nuclear
weapons. At that pre use stage these weapons are already criminal and
that
is when we a need a legal remedy.
2. Finally I want to make a direct appeal to you Judge Seckman and to you
assistant City attorney Ringler to start a process of review of what goes on
on
the City property at Peterson AFB relative to the 24/7 deployment and command
of the doomsday weapons we are talking about. There should be another city
file on Peterson in addition to the one with the maps and lease agreements.
This new file needs to contain the information about what goes on relative to
nuclear weapons and how that squares or does not square with international
law and Colorado law. If you do not do that I believe
that you will have
given your personal legal embrace to weapons of mass destruction. One
could
say that your fingerprints are on the weapons and the plans to use them and
if there were a court to try you you would be found guilty of war crimes for If you have a rebuttal to that that you can sell to the courtroom full of
folks assembled here I'd like to hear it.
Just to be clear once again
I repeat the quote from the Gazette's story" "A single, typical
warhead
flattens buildings and kills most people in a 2.5 mile ring from ground zero
and starts fires in an area twice that size…This is madness. This is
wrong.
This is criminal.
Donna's statement
The Air Force, the City and even this Court may see us as a sorry lot.
2. I am also sorry that more of us were not available that day to assist
in
making the arrest. We will have more people there next time. At some future
point the issues we raise will be taken seriously. We can only hope that day
will come before the U.S. starts dropping nuclear bombs again.
3. And I am very sorry that the City and the Air Force cannot think
outside
the little in limine box of rules so that the trial could have been about
what it is really about: crimes against humanity, violations of International
Laws, and the breaking of treaties. Why does the City do the dirty work of
the Air Force?
4. I am sorry that the Civil Religion, which is a strange version of
Christianity, in this country does not even get close to understanding, much
less loving our enemies. In fact, "unlimited retaliation" (the
standard
before the Ten Commandments) is our middle name. Domination of the air, land
and seas is the goal of the U.S. so that we can get richer at the expense of
others who already don't get their share of the world's goods. We are 6% of
the world's population using more than half of the word's resources. And now
the U.S. has a new list of targeted enemies and a plan for even more nuclear bombs. How far will you let this illegal and immoral madness go before you do
something to stop it? To think on a different scale, if your next-door
neighbor acted like this you would be outraged and take action.
5. And finally I am sorry that the City will not take a look at what is
happening on City property. You worry more about whose feet are where than
about the thousands of weapons of mass destruction that will end life as we
know it on this planet. In my work as a psychologist we call this denial.
Denial is not a good thing and we work to bring that which is denied into
consciousness. That is my reason for making a Citizen's Arrest and I am
nowhere near sorry for doing that. And no consequences imposed by this court
for our effort to uphold international law and speak against the immorality
of nuclear weapons will stop us from further acts of civil resistance.
Donna Johnson
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