NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — An appeals court has overturned the sabotage convictions of an 85-year-old nun and two fellow peace activists who broke into a facility storing much of this country’s bomb-grade uranium and painted slogans and splashed blood on the walls.
In a 2-1 opinion issued on Friday, a panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the most serious conviction against Sister Megan Rice, 66-year-old Michael Walli and 59-year-old Greg Boertje-Obed. The court upheld a conviction for injuring government property.
On July 28, 2012, the activists cut through several fences at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge to reach the uranium storage bunker. Once there, they hung banners, prayed and hammered on the outside wall of the bunker to symbolize a Bible passage that refers to the end of war: “They will beat their swords into ploughshares.”
At issue was whether the nonviolent protest injured national security. The majority opinion of the appeals court found that it did not.
“If a defendant blew up a building used to manufacture components for nuclear weapons … the government surely could demonstrate an adverse effect on the nation’s ability to attack or defend. … But vague platitudes about a facility’s ‘crucial role in the national defense’ are not enough to convict a defendant of sabotage,” the opinion says.
Rice is serving a sentence of just under three years. Walli and Boertje-Obed are each serving sentences of just over five years.
Defendant’s attorney Bill Quigley said he hopes they will be re-sentenced to time served and released from prison.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee did not immediately comment on the ruling Friday.
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I’m glad that these three poor old brave decent foolish souls have had their sentences reduced. The insane over-charge by the U.S. Attorney was both embarrassing to the nation and the product of bureaucratic embarrassment that they managed to penetrate the base where most of the nation’s weapons grade uranium is stored. And far from harming national security, they demonstrated that three aging hippies, one of whom is a barely ambulatory octogenarian nun, could penetrate the defenses of the facility where most of the nation’s weapon’s grade uranium is stored with a pair of wire cutters.
Because, I’m glad it didn’t happen, but I’d also like to think that anyone who tried to do what they actually did would have been arrested, electrocuted, blown up or riddled with bullets about ten seconds after they passed the “cross this line and we’ll shoot you” signs. And apparently, that’s not the case.
Generic Edward Snowdens is kind of what this trio are. Without the stealing and selling parts of course but they have exposed a major Governmental weakness.