greenlink%gn@cdp.uucp (10/08/89)
Date: October 4, 1989
Via GreenLink:
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By RICHARD CARELLI
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Eight antiwar activists convicted of breaking
into a Pennsylvania plant, damaging two nuclear missile cones and
pouring blood on related documents lost a Supreme Court appeal
today.
The court, over two dissenting votes, turned down arguments that
the activists, known as the "Plowshares Eight" after the biblical
prophesy that swords will be beaten into plowshares, were denied
a fair trial.
Justices William J. Brennan and Thurgood Marshall voted to grant
full review to the case, but that left the eight activists two
votes short.
The eight, including longtime antiwar activist brothers Daniel
and Philip Berrigan, broke into a General Electric plant in King
of Prussia, Pa., on Sept. 9, 1980.
The protesters used hammers to beat the missile cones GE was
manufacturing for the federal government. Prosecutors said the
intruders caused about $28,000 in damages.
In addition to the Berrigans, the defendants were the Rev. Carl
Kabat of Baltimore, a priest with the Oblate of Mary Immaculate
Order; Sister Anne Montgomery, a member of the Relgious Order of
the Sacred Heart who taught in New York City; Dean Hammer, a New
Haven, Conn., Protestant chaplain; Elmer Maas, a former music and
philosophy professor; Molly Rush of Pittsburgh, director of the
Thomas Merton Center for Justice and Peace; and John Schuchardt,
a Baltimore lawyer.
Each was convicted of burglary, conspiracy and criminal mischief
in a 1981 trial in Norristown, Pa. Sentences ranged up to 3-to-
10-year prison terms.
A state appeals court threw out the convictions after ruling
that the eight had been denied a public trial because only news
reporters, not members of the general public, were allowed to be
in the courtroom during jury selection.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed that ruling and sent the
case back to the appeals court.
In late 1987, the appeal court ruled that the trial judge had
been biased against the defendants, and ordered resentencing. But
it voted 5-4 to uphold the eight convictions.
The state Supreme Court refused to hear the activists' ensuing
appeal last Feb. 3.
In the appeal acted on today, lawyers for the eight argued that
the defendants' right to a fair and public trial was violated by
the exclusion of most spectators during the five days in which
jurors were selected.
"Exemption of the press from an order closing the courtoom for
the first five days of the trial cannot relieve the judge's
action of its constitutional defect," the appeal said.
In urging the justices to reject the appeal, Montgomery County
lawyer Mary M. Killinger said, "There was no real limitation on
the public's access to any information," and that the exclusion
was ordered to ensure "a calm and quiet setting."
Saying that the judge's exclusion order was "perhaps unwise," Ms.
Killinger said it "does not catapult this case into the area of
significant and constitutional error" worthy of the high court's
review.
The eight activists have not yet been resentenced. All except
Kabat, who is serving a prison term for an unrelated conviction,
are free on bail.
The case is Berrigan vs. Pennsylvania, 89-5119.
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