Antinuclear

Anti nuclear Sister Megan Rice may face the rest of her life in prison

Rice, an 82-year old vowed sister of the Society of the Holy Child of Jesus, was much calmer than the average person facing up to 16 years in federal prison for pulling off what has been dubbed by some legal experts as the biggest security breach in the history of the nation’s atomic complex.

A decision on both the dismissal and the admission of evidence will be made by Judge Shirley within the next 30 days. A trial in the U.S. District Court is scheduled for late February 2013.

82 year old nun ready to go to prison for nuclear breach  (uncludes video)  By Jo Piazza / current.com , 22 Nov 12, With her fingers pointed in a steeple supporting her chin, Sister Megan Rice made a small but formidable presence in the East Tennessee District Court this week.

Clad in a lavender hoodie and navy sweatpants, her steel-colored hair cut into a sturdy pixie, the diminutive Catholic nun was nearly dwarfed by the large wooden defendant’s table. Rice, an 82-year old vowed sister of the Society of the Holy Child of Jesus, was much calmer than the average person facing up to 16 years in federal prison for pulling off what has been dubbed by some legal experts as the biggest security breach in the history of the nation’s atomic complex.

In the very early morning of July 28, the nun and two accomplices, Gregory I. Boertje-Obed, 57 and Michael R. Walli, 63, both United States military veterans, broke into the inner sanctum of the Y-12 nuclear facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., a suburb of Knoxville. Once inside Y-12, famous for being the home of production for the Manhattan Project during the second World War, they hammered walls, hung bangers and poured blood on the site’s billion-dollar highly enriched uranium materials facility.

(More from Current: Nuns taking charge)

They have all been charged with two felonies, destruction and depredation of government property, which collectively carry a maximum sentence of 16 years in prison and up to $600,000 in fines.

“I’m not scared about prison at all. If it comes to it, I’m ready,” Rice said the night before her hearing at a pot luck dinner in a Church of the Savior congregational church. Prison isn’t something new; she has served two six-month stints before, both for civil disobedience.

“If I go, I would like to go to Alderson. I’ve never been there,” she said,…….

If she is allotted the maximum sentence, the nun could very well spend the rest of her life in prison.

“As far as I am concerned it is a death sentence for Megan Rice,” Kary Love, an advising attorney for the defense, told Current.

On Tuesday the defense team for the Plowshares 3, as they call themselves, argued to dismiss the charges against their clients on the basis of the presumed illegality of nuclear weapons under international law. The prosecution, meanwhile, sought to limit various justification and necessity defenses as well as any discussion of morality or religion. A decision on both the dismissal and the admission of evidence will be made by Judge Shirley within the next 30 days. A trial in the U.S. District Court is scheduled for late February 2013.

Legal experts say a dismissal is extremely unlikely and no one is pretending this trial is not going to be an exercise in political theatre with the activists presenting their arguments in favor of nuclear disarmament and the government seeking to minimize the fact that what is supposed to be one of the most secure facilities in the world was breached by a triumvirate of over-50 peace activists.

If Sister Megan Rice is found guilty it wouldn’t be the first time that the Eastern Tennessee courts have sent a Catholic nun to federal prison for breaching Y-12.

Sister Mary Dennis Lentsch, who sat quietly in the front row for Rice’s hearing, served time for crossing the fence at the nuclear facility in 2010. But this case is more serious than the 2010 trespassing.

The Plowshares 3 made it further into the facility than anyone engaged in a civil disobedience action ever made it before…..

Megan has trouble going up hills so we walked at an angle,” Boertje-Obed said. “We just kept going to the right. Megan was so tired when we got to the top that I said, ‘Let’s just go to the first building that we happen to see.’”

That building happened to be the site’s mother lode for nuclear storage — a uranium enrichment facility. Carrying flashlights, binoculars, bread, flowers and a Bible, the trio had cut their way through four fences using bolt cutters and negotiated through an infrared intrusion detection system before finding themselves in front of the warehouse storing the country’s weapons grade uranium. They had enough time within the perimeter to sling banners on the walls: “Swords into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks,” quoting the book of Isaiah. Another read: “The Fruit of Justice is Peace.”

They were able to chip concrete from the walls with hammers.

“Just a little. It wasn’t violent,” Rice said. They poured blood (obtained from three living humans supportive of their cause) onto the building……

Frank Munger, the Knoxville News Sentinel senior reporter who covers the paper’s Department of Energy issues and has been on the Y-12 beat for three decades, said that in the aftermath of the July arrest plenty of residents of Knoxville thought that the guards should not have hesitated to use deadly force against the nuclear nun and her two accomplices.

“You heard people say,” Munger said, “they should have shot them.” http://current.com/groups/news-blog/93969191_82-year-old-nun-ready-to-go-to-prison-for-nuclear-breach.htm

November 22, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized