Assault
on Free Speech? Selective judicial zealotry? Ulterior political motives? Third World dictatorship? No, Ashcroft at war. Holy McCarthyism, Batman! -
KWC
Students,
Nuns and Sailor-Mongers, Beware
Atty. Gen.
Ashcroft is pulling out all the stops to prosecute
protesters.
By Jonathan
Turley, October 17, 2003 in the Los Angeles Times
Jonathan Turley is a professor of law at George
Washington University.
It has lain dormant in the darkest
recesses of American law for 125 years, but this month Atty. Gen. John
Ashcroft introduced critics of the administration to his latest weapon in law
enforcement.
In a Miami federal court, the attorney general charged
the environmental group Greenpeace under an obscure 1872 law originally intended to end the
practice of "sailor-mongering," or the luring of sailors with liquor and
prostitutes from their ships. Ashcroft plucked the law from obscurity to
punish Greenpeace for boarding a vessel near port in Miami.
Not only
is the law being used to prosecute one of the administration's most vocal
critics in an unprecedented attack on the 1st Amendment, but it appears to be
part of a broader campaign by Ashcroft to protect the nation against free
speech, a campaign that has converted environmentalists into "sailor-mongers"
and nuns into terrorists.
The case against Greenpeace started with a
protest in April 2002. The activist group was leading an international effort
to stop the illegal importing of mahogany. It believed that a ship, the APL
Jade, was engaging in this illegal trade and decided to conduct one of its
signature demonstrations to protest the Bush administration's failure to stop
the imports. In clearly marked boats, Greenpeace followed the ship. Two of its
members boarded the vessel about eight miles outside the Miami port, carrying
a banner that read "President Bush, Stop Illegal
Logging."
Such protests
are common, and the
two activists wore Greenpeace jackets, identified themselves as Greenpeace
members and allowed themselves to be arrested. They ultimately pleaded guilty
to a misdemeanor and were released. The wood was unloaded and everyone seemed
satisfied.
Everyone, that is, except Ashcroft. Fifteen months after the
incident, the Justice Department filed an indictment in Miami against the
entire Greenpeace organization under the 1872 law, a law that
appears to have been used only twice.
A New York
court in 1872
described
the law as both "inartistic and obscure." An Oregon court in
1890
described
the purpose of the law as preventing "the evil" of "sailor-mongers [who] get
on board vessels and by the help of intoxicants, and the use of other means,
often savoring of violence, get the crews ashore and leave the vessel without
help to manage or care for her."
Of course, there did not appear to be
many sailors on the APL Jade being lured out to join Greenpeace. But
proceeding against two protesters on trivial misdemeanor charges wasn't enough
for the Justice Department. So it decided to treat Greenpeace activists not as
protesters but as sailor-mongers.
Greenpeace now could lose its
tax-exempt status — a potential death knell for a large public interest
organization. A conviction could also force Greenpeace to regularly report its
actions to the government. Such a prospect must secretly delight many in the
administration who see the group as an ever-present irritant. After all, it
was Greenpeace that held the first demonstration at the president's ranch
after his inauguration, causing a stir when activists unfurled a banner
reading "Bush: the Toxic Texan. Don't Mess With the Earth."
Since that
time, Greenpeace has waged a continual campaign against Bush's environmental
record. Ashcroft's
jihad against
free speech, however, is not limited to environmentalists. Consider the case
of three Dominican nuns. Last year, Sister Ardeth Platte, 66, Sister Jackie
Hudson, 68, and Sister Carol Gilbert, 55, participated in a peaceful
demonstration for nuclear disarmament.
As part of the protest, the
three nuns cut through a chain-link fence around a Minuteman III missile silo.
There is only a light fence because the missile is protected by a 110-ton
concrete cap that is designed to withstand a nuclear explosion. The nuns
proceeded to paint crosses on the cap and symbolically hit it with hammers.
They then knelt, prayed, sang religious songs and waited for arrest. The most
the government could allege in terms of damage was $3,000.
However, the
Ashcroft Justice Department wanted more than compensation and a common
misdemeanor. It charged the nuns with obstructing
national defense, which
subjected each to a potential 30-year prison term. When the government pushed
the court to impose sentences of as much as eight years, the judge refused.
However, the judge found, as alleged by the government, that the three nuns
had put military personnel "in harm's way." Accordingly, he imposed on them
sentences ranging from 2 1/2 years to 3 1/2 years.
The administration
has pursued a similar zero-tolerance policy in other cases. It has been
accused of using unconstitutional
"trap-and-arrest" tactics to suppress
protests in Washington, D.C., where hundreds of journalists, bystanders and
student protesters were arrested en masse without a warning or an opportunity
to disperse. They were then left hog-tied in holding areas for as long as 20
hours, with their hands bound to their ankles.
The Greenpeace case is
particularly chilling because of the extraordinary effort to find a law that
could be used to pursue the organization. The 1872 law is a legal relic that
must have required much archeological digging through law books to
find.
It is also notable that other organizations have not faced such
attacks. For example, in this same judicial district in Florida, the
Cuban
American group Democracy Movement organized a
protest in which members sailed into a government-designated security zone.
Although the members were charged, the organization was not. Similarly, other
groups viewed favorably by the administration — such as anti-abortion groups —
have not been subject to criminal indictments of their organizations for such
protests.
The extraordinary effort made to find and use this obscure
law strongly
suggests a campaign of selective prosecution — the
greatest scourge of the 1st Amendment.
Greenpeace was engaged in a
classic protest used by countless organizations, from those of the civil
rights movement to anti-abortion groups. It is a way for citizens to express
their opposition by literally standing in the path of the government. None of
these organizations contest the right of the government to punish them for
trespass or even criminal misdemeanors. Indeed, they view such punishment as a
badge of honor.
However, Ashcroft is now seeking symbols of his own:
The image of a major environmentalist organization placed on probation or nuns
being sent to jail is clearly meant to send a chilling message from the man
who once accused his critics of aiding and abetting terrorists. Unless deterred by Congress or the
courts, Ashcroft will continue his campaign to protect Americans from the
ravages of free speech. If he succeeds, it will not be sailors but free speech
that will be shanghaied in Miami.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-turley17oct17,1,7018434.story
also at
Common Dreams @ http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1017-06.htm