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Title: The Age of Conspiracy Charges Author: CrimethInc. Date: July 27, 2010 Language: en Topics: conspiracy, law, Justice Source: Retrieved on 9th November 2020 from https://crimethinc.com/2010/07/27/the-age-of-conspiracy-charges
Looking back over the past decade, it appears that North American law
enforcement agencies are increasingly utilizing conspiracy charges to
target anarchists and others involved in radical communities. Weâve
composed a review of recent conspiracy cases in hopes of analyzing what
we can do to discourage the state from pursuing this strategy of
repression. Meanwhile, our comrades are embarking on a nationwide tour
to address this same issue.
If conspiracy charges are becoming central to the stateâs strategy
against anarchists, it is imperative that we develop a strategy of our
own to respond to this and seize the initiative rather than simply
reacting over and over to individual cases. This text is a humble effort
in that direction, in hopes of inspiring more thoughtful reflections
from our comrades.
Conspiracy charges are convenient for police and federal agents in that
they do not require authorities to prove that any actual illegal
activity took place, only shared intent. In that regard, they are an
ideal weapon to wield against ideologically-based communities; they also
lend themselves to government agentsâ efforts to entrap naĂŻve activists.
There are also signs that the authorities may be attempting to fabricate
evidence for larger conspiracy cases on a national scale. Itâs
impossible to know whether these will ever pan out, but itâs certainly
better to be prepared.
What can we do to respond to this strategy of repression? Here are some
basic starting places:
organizing.
The state targets public organizers like the SHAC 7 or the RNC 8 because
they are effective. Public organizing groups have been essential in
creating the necessary conditions for anarchists to determine the
character of recent mobilizations such as those against the 2008
Republican National Convention and the G20 summits of 2009 and 2010. The
same goes for local and ongoing campaigns.
Even when it is framed as a strategic choice, retreating from public
organizing can only play into the hands of the authorities. Repression
is intended to cause militants to back away from engaging with the
public, losing connection with a broader social base and deepening the
false dichotomy between passive âcommunity organizingâ and clandestine
direct action. This is not to say everyone must organize publiclyâon the
contrary, one function of public organizing is to prepare a favorable
ground for more generalized and anonymous actionsâbut that it is a
necessary aspect of anarchist struggle.
There are many ways we can do this. Perhaps the most obvious is to
practice appropriate security culture, sharing sensitive information on
a need-to-know basis and doing our best to keep informants out of our
circles. Security culture is not only for those who may be party to
illegal activity; it is important for everyone connected to networks
that the state is interested in mapping or disrupting. Some hypothesize
that one of the reasons the authorities didnât bring conspiracy charges
against organizers of the Pittsburgh G20 protests was that, in contrast
to the RNC Welcoming Committee, individuals suspected of being police
agents were not permitted into the coordinating group. The closer
informants are to us, the easier it is for them to prepare cases of some
kind, however fabricated.
Likewise, itâs important to keep an eye out for federal bounty hunters
preying on naĂŻve young activists. Often they prefer to target the least
experienced or connected individuals in a social milieu instead of
tangling with longtime militants. We can also inoculate ourselves
against disruption by sorting out internal conflicts before they offer
infiltrators or prosecutors opportunities to divide us against each
other.
After so many conspiracy cases have been brought against anarchists, we
should no longer be surprised by new ones. We need to be thinking in
advance about how to respond to them; that means preparing legal support
structures and bail funds even when we donât have reason to believe
weâre about to be targeted. It also means being intentional about how we
conduct ourselves so we donât make it easier for prosecutors to demonize
us. In the words of grand jury resister Carrie Feldman,
Does whatever value I gained from wearing an ALF shirt in high school
outweigh the fact that it was later used to smear me in court and
justify holding me in jail for four months? Mostly I just want to say,
yeah, fuckâem. Bring it on. But I think the important thing is to always
be weighing that, be aware of it. Be ready to own everything you say and
do. Donât just front or talk a militant line to sound cool. When youâre
reading about it in your FBI file youâll want to have said things worth
standing by.
Whenever someone is targeted with a politically motivated conspiracy
case, itâs important that we mobilize the very best legal defense we
can. This means hiring good lawyers, not just accepting lazy and often
outright backstabbing court-appointed defenders. Every conspiracy case
against radicals sets a precedent for more of the same; defending one of
us is literally defending all of us. Good lawyers serve two functions.
First, they intimidate the state, which will be more likely to bargain
or drop charges if it knows pressing them will be expensive and risky.
Second, they can win cases or get them thrown out, as recently occurred
in the case of the AETA 4. Raising the money to defend one person
effectively can save a lot more money and heartache in the long run.
Public support campaigns are equally important. On one side, this means
going public when you are targetedâboth so you can receive support and
so that repression will be brought into the spotlight. On the other, it
means organizing long-term support for defendants, so they will feel
invested in answering to the community and so the authorities will have
to factor in public relations challenges when they consider whether to
target us. Support campaigns can target the most vulnerable individuals
in the power structure; the supporters of the RNC 8 did this by
concentrating on county attorney Susan Gaertner, who was eventually
forced to drop the terrorism charges against the defendants.
Finally, though this should go without saying, we can protect ourselves
from conspiracy charges simply by not cooperating with the authorities.
Of the cases detailed below, many of them would never have gotten off
the ground if people had not been intimidated into making statements
against their former comrades. Nobody talks, everybody walksâthat goes
for our whole community as well as specific groups of defendants.
Defendants who cooperate with the government never come out ahead. As
detailed below and elsewhere, not only do they lose friends and
community support, they rarely get significantly shorter sentencesâand
doing prison time is much harder as an informant.
conspiracy charges and circulate it to the general public.
If the authorities come to rely on pressing conspiracy charges against
anarchists as a central strategy of repression, we must take advantage
of the ways this makes them vulnerable. Many in our societyâand not just
radicalsâare uncomfortable with the idea of people being persecuted for
thought crime. We need to find ways to address people outside our social
and political circles about the prevalence of conspiracy charges, so as
to utilize this opportunity to discredit the state and delegitimize
conspiracy-based cases. The broader the range of people who disapprove
of this tactic, the more the hands of the authorities will be tied.
Most of this work has yet to be done. If you are concerned about
government repression, consider the ways you can approach others outside
radical communities about this issue.
When we talk about conspiracy charges and witch hunts, itâs important to
emphasize that weâre talking about the state, which exists to carry out
violent repression. As long as there are inequalities and injustices,
there will be resistance, and those in power will attempt to repress it.
If we take ourselves seriously as a revolutionary movement, we need to
see ourselves in the larger context and histories of resistance
movements and the repression they have faced; we would do well to learn
both from the successes and the failures of the past. Itâs also
important to remember that repression is a daily fact of life for
countless people in communities on the wrong end of power and privilege;
anarchists are far from exceptional in this regard.
This is hardly a comprehensive survey of conspiracy charges pressed
against anarchists and other radicals in recent history. However, it
does cover some of the landmark cases that created the current context,
as well as ongoing cases that will set important precedents.
Altogether, this review encompasses charges pressed against nearly a
hundred individuals. The cases themselves vary from fairly conventional
uses of conspiracy charges to outright entrapment and examples that
stretch the legal definition of conspiracy even by prosecutorsâ
standards.
In the early days of the 21^(st) century, although several hearings
before Congress had brought governmental pressure to bear against the
animal liberation movement, efforts to quash direct action organizing by
capturing and prosecuting participants proved fruitless. Finally, a New
Jersey federal grand jury indicted seven individuals and the
organization Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA on charges of animal
enterprise terrorism under the Animal Enterprise Protection Act on May
26, 2004. Charges of interstate stalking and conspiracy to use a
telecommunications device to harass others were also included in the
indictment. It has been said that the defendants were essentially
targeted for running a website advocating direct action.
The SHAC 7 were convicted on March 2, 2006 under the AETA. Their
conviction probably emboldened law enforcement agencies to utilize
conspiracy charges to target radicals nationwide, especially in cases in
which simple criminal charges could not be pressed convincingly or did
not appear to offer enough of a deterrent.
On December 2, 2004, federal prosecutors indicted Rod Coronado on
conspiracy charges related to a local environmental group interfering
with mountain lion hunting in Sabino Canyon in March 2003. The
indictment came just seven days before Coronado was to stand trial for
three lesser misdemeanor charges filed after his arrest in Sabino Canyon
on March 26. The new charge carried a maximum penalty of six years in
prison.
Coronado faced this among many other charges in a concerted campaign of
harassment across several years. On December 13, 2005, he and
codefendant Matthew Crozier were found guilty of felony conspiracy to
interfere with or injure a government official, misdemeanor interference
with or injury to a forest officer, and misdemeanor depredation of
government property. Coronado was sentenced on August 6, 2006 to eight
months in prison, three years supervised probation, and fined $100.
Crozier was sentenced to 100 hours community service, three years
probation, and a $1000 fine.
In December 2005 and January 2006, with assistance from the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), the FBI indicted six
women and seven men on a total of 65 charges, including arson,
conspiracy, use of destructive devices, and destruction of an energy
facility. The defendants were named as Joseph Dibee (still at large),
Chelsea Dawn Gerlach, Sarah Kendall Harvey (née Kendall Tankersley),
Daniel McGowan, Stanislas Meyerhoff, Josephine Overaker (still at
large), Jonathan Paul, Rebecca Rubin (still at large), Suzanne Savoie,
Justin Solondz (currently in custody in China), Darren Thurston, Kevin
Tubbs, and Briana Waters (not charged with conspiracy). A number of
other unindicted co-conspirators were also named, including Jacob
Ferguson, Jen Kolar, and Lacey Philabaum, all of whom joined Meyerhoff,
Gerlach, Harvey, Savoie, Tubbs, and Thurston in accepting plea deals in
return for informing to the government. Another alleged co-conspirator,
William Rodgers, committed suicide while in police custody. Nathan Block
and Joyanna Zacher were added in a superseding indictment in June 2006.
In January 2006, as a result of a separate investigation but widely
reported as an extension of Operation Backfire, three more
individualsâEric McDavid, Zachary Jenson, and Lauren Weinerâwere
arrested in Auburn, California for conspiring to damage facilities âby
explosive or fire.â Jenson and Weiner took cooperating plea bargains,
selling out McDavid, who was convicted on all counts September 27, 2007
and was sentenced in May 2008 to nearly 20 years in prison.
The McDavid case is notable because of the role of a paid informant,
âAnna,â who essentially entrapped the defendants by utilizing money and
flirtation to lure them into discussions about illegal activity. It
subsequently received coverage in Elle magazine among other venues.
Nathan Fraser Block, aka âExile,â and Joyanna Lynn Zacher, aka âSadie,â
were arrested in February 2006 in Olympia, Washington in connection to
the Jefferson Poplar Farm fire which occurred in 2001 in Clatskanie,
Oregon. (After this writing, it came to light that Sadie and Exile hold
both racist and transphobic views; the anarchist community has parted
ways with them.)
In November 2006, Joyanna Zacher and Nathan Block each pled to one count
of conspiracy, attempted arson, plus multiple arson charges from actions
at the Joe Romania Chevrolet car dealership in Eugene and the Jefferson
Poplar tree farm, as part of a global resolution agreement with
prosecutors in the Operation Backfire case. Daniel McGowan and Jonathan
Paul entered plea deals in the same hearing, resolving all the
outstanding Operation Backfire cases. All four defendants refused to
assist in government investigations of other activists. It is worth
noting that, compared to the cooperating defendants in the Backfire case
(see chart, as a GIF or PDF), the non-cooperating defendants received
proportionately shorter sentences.
Eight Black community activists, including former Black Panthers, were
arrested January 23, 2007 on charges related to the 1971 killing of a
San Francisco police officer. Similar charges were thrown out after it
was revealed that police had used torture to extract confessions when
some of the same men were arrested in New Orleans in 1973.
Richard Brown, Richard OâNeal, Ray Boudreaux, and Hank Jones were
arrested in California. Francisco Torres was arrested in Queens, New
York. Harold Taylor was arrested in Florida. Herman Bell and Jalil
Muntaqimâhad already been held as political prisoners for over 30 years
in New York State prisons. The men were charged with the murder of Sgt.
John Young and conspiracy encompassing numerous acts between 1968 and
1973. Bail amounts were originally set between three and five million
dollars each.
Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim were sentenced to probation and time
served, after Bell agreed to plead to voluntary manslaughter and
Muntaqim to conspiracy to voluntary manslaughter. All charges were then
dropped against Brown, Jones, Taylor, and Boudreaux, with the
prosecution admitting it had âinsufficient evidenceâ against them.
Charges had already been dropped against OâNeal in 2008.
Francisco Torres is the last one still facing charges; he maintains his
innocence and will appear in court on August 10.
In March 2008, Marius Mason, Frank Ambrose, Aren Burthwick, and
Stephanie Lynne Fultz were arrested and charged with conspiracy to
commit arson; Mason and Ambrose faced additional charges related to acts
of property destruction that occurred in 1999 and 2000. It came out that
Ambrose, Masonâs ex-husband, had been assisting the FBI extensively in
investigating environmental organizing since 2007; despite this, his
plea bargain resulted in a nine year sentence, two years more than the
prosecutor had requested. Burthwick and Fultz also negotiated
cooperating deals with the Justice Department, agreeing to help in the
investigation of Mason. Mason was threatened with a life sentence before
accepting a plea bargain in September 2008, in which he also admitted
involvement in 12 other acts totaling more than $2.5 million of property
damage.
Mason was sentenced on February 5, 2009 in federal court in Lansing,
Michigan. He received almost 22 years, the longest sentence of any Green
Scare prisoner. The sentence is currently being appealed.
Bryan Rivera, aka Bryan Lefey, was arrested July 2008 on charges
relating to a July 2000 Earth Liberation Front action at the U.S. Forest
Service Facility in Rhinelander, WI, where genetic research was being
conducted on trees.
Katherine Christianson was originally named as a co-conspirator.
Government informant Ian Wallace, who was cooperating in investigations
into other ELF actions, got involved and named Aaron Ellringer and
Daniel McGowan as additional co-conspirators. Christianson and Ellringer
eventually became government informants. All were convicted; Ellringer
received four days, Christianson 2 years, Lefey 3 years, Wallace 3 years
for this and related actions.
Green Scare prisoner Daniel McGowan, already serving a 7 year sentence,
had also been involved in the Rhinelander action, but was not prosecuted
federally for it as stipulated in his 2006 non-cooperating plea
agreement. McGowan steadfastly refused to cooperate in the Rhinelander
investigation, and in summer 2008 his federal sentence was suspended for
a brief time while he was held in civil contempt for refusing to testify
before a grand jury about the action.
In what was the first use of criminal charges under the 2002 Minnesota
version of the Federal Patriot Act, Ramsey County prosecutors charged
eight alleged organizers of protests against the 2008 Republican
National Convention with Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism.
The 8 faced up to seven and a half years in prison under the terrorism
enhancement associated with the charge, which allows for a 50% increase
in the maximum penalty. They later received more chargesâconspiracy to
commit property damage, conspiracy to commit property damage in
furtherance of terrorism, conspiracy to riot, and the original charge.
In early April 2009, county attorney Susan Gaertner dropped the charges
of Conspiracy to Commit Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism and Conspiracy
to Commit Criminal Damage to Property in Furtherance of Terrorism. This
occurred shortly after one of the defendants appeared on MSNBC and
petitions to drop all the charges were delivered to Gaertnerâs office,
including a resolution from the 17,000-member Duluth Central Labor Body
in support of the RNC 8.
The terrorism charges were dropped as a direct result of a political
pressure campaign against Gaertner, who had pressed the charges and was
running for governor at the time. After protests at all of her campaign
events and various other disruptions, Gaertnerâs name became synonymous
with the RNC 8 to such an extent that eventually she had to adopt âThe
courage to do the right thing even when it is politically unpopularâ as
a campaign slogan. When Gaertner dropped the terrorism charges, she
explained to a local paper that the terrorism charges would be
âdistractingâ and âa disaster at trial.â This was not enough to save her
campaign; she later dropped out of the governorâs race entirely.
Significantly, no conspiracy charges were filed against organizers of
protests against the 2009 G20 summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This
seems to indicate that the support campaign for the RNC 8 was successful
enough to discourage the state from attempting the same strategy,
although it was surely caused by factors in Pittsburgh as well. The
latter may include the willingness of the organizing group to exclude
suspicious individuals and hesitance on the part of local officials to
go after well-connected activists.
The other two conspiracy charges remain pending against the RNC 8. The
trial will begin on October 25, 2010.
On February 19 and 20, 2009, the Joint Terrorism Task Force of the FBI
arrested Joseph Buddenberg, Maryam Khajavi, Nathan Pope, and Adriana
Stump; they were charged with conspiracy to violate the Animal
Enterprise Terrorism Act for protest activity relating to home
demonstrations in which they wrote on a sidewalk with chalk, among other
things.
A judge dismissed the case âwithout prejudiceâ in July 2010 on the
grounds that the government didnât give enough specifics on the alleged
criminal activity:
In order for an indictment to fulfill its constitutional purposes, it
must allege facts that sufficiently inform each defendant of what it is
that he or she is alleged to have done that constitutes a crime. This is
particularly important where the species of behavior in question spans a
wide spectrum from criminal conduct to constitutionally protected
political protest. While âtrue threatsâ enjoy no First Amendment
protection, picketing and political protest are at the very core of what
is protected by the First Amendment.
Because the case was dismissed without prejudice, the government can
re-indict the defendants; it is unclear whether this will occur.
Gina âTigaâ Wertz and Hugh Farrell were arrested on April 24, 2009 by
Indiana state authorities and charged with multiple counts of
intimidation, conversion, and corrupt business influence, a felony
racketeering charge, for their involvement in protests against I-69. The
felony racketeering charge was later dismissed. Both pled July 2010 to
misdemeanor charges and received 15 months probation.
Kevin Olliff was arrested in April 2009 on state charges for
protest-related activity against UCLA vivisectors three years earlier;
he faced 10 felony charges including multiple counts of stalking,
conspiracy, conspiracy to stalk, and threatening of a public servant.
Olliff did not make bail and stayed in jail for almost a year before he
pled to six of the ten felony counts against him in March 2010 in a
non-cooperating plea agreement.
Carrie Feldman was subpoenaed to a federal grand jury in Davenport, Iowa
in October 2009. She read a statement of non-cooperation and pled the
5^(th) Amendment, and was re-subpoenaed for November. Scott DeMuth was
subpoenaed to appear with her, and the two were both jailed for civil
contempt on account of refusing to answer questions.
Scott DeMuth was indicted for conspiracy to violate the AETA days later,
and was released pending trial; Feldman was jailed for four months,
during which time her case received public attention. She was eventually
released because âher testimony is no longer needed.â DeMuthâs trial is
scheduled to begin September 13, 2010.
Eleven people were arrested on May 1, 2010 in Asheville, NC, accused of
doing $20,000 worth of damage to downtown businesses. Each was charged
with 3 felonies (felony riot, felony conspiracy to riot, felony damage
to property) and 10 misdemeanors (one was charged with 11). Initially
set at $10,000, bail was ratcheted up to $65,000 apiece as the
authorities implemented anti-anarchist scare tactics in the media and
court system. Their trial dates have yet to be set.
Sixteen people were arrested and charged with conspiracy on account of
the protests against the G20 summit in Toronto, Canada. Although this is
occurring in Canada, the Canadian government is clearly hoping to
utilize the conspiracy model pioneered in the SHAC 7 and RNC 8 cases to
terrorize dissidents involved in laying the framework for the most
intense protests Ontario has seen thus far this century. As of now,
little information is available about the Toronto G20 charges; the
government is not releasing any information, and lawyers appear to be
advising the defendants to proceed extremely carefully.