Nun’s sabotage conviction scrapped

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Reuters

Nun’s sabotage conviction scrapped
May 8 2015 at 09:52pm
By Reuters

Washington - A US appellate court on Friday overturned sabotage convictions against an elderly nun and two other peace activists for breaking into a Tennessee nuclear defense facility in 2012.

Megan Rice, 85, was sentenced to three years for the break-in at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, an incident that embarrassed US officials and prompted security changes.

In a 2-1 decision, the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals also reversed sabotage convictions against two US Army veterans, Michael Walli and Greg Boertje-Obed. The panel found that the three lacked the necessary intent for a violation of the federal Sabotage Act.

Walli and Boertje-Obed had received five years in prison. The court upheld their convictions for the less serious crime of injury to government property and ordered them to be resentenced.


Read more: http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/nun-s-sabotage-conviction-scrapped-1.1856142#.VU0byWdFCYE

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[shenmue]

1. Peace is good

[Stuart G]

2. Great News!!!!!k and r..nt

[Peace Patriot]

3. Wonderful news!

Love, hugs and kudos to these incredibly brave and heartfelt people who have given so much of their lives to ending nuclear weapons madness and to keeping us all safer and making us all think harder about our country and our world!

[CharlotteVale]

4. Best news I've heard all day.

[NaturalHigh]

5. Good news!

[Euphoria]

6. Somewhere sometimes sanity prevails.

Let's hope the decision stays.

Look at the message on her t-shirt.

[reddread]

7. God bless America

[geek tragedy]

8. oh dear. this menace to society is now free to spread love and peace.

will no one think of the MIC?

[Enthusiast]

9. Sister Megan, you are my hero.

[mountain grammy]

10. Good news! Absolutely the most insane charges ever..

[kjones]

11. Nun + Sabatage and I thought "Sound of Music" haha

[weissmam]

12. while I don't disagree with there intention

how about feeding some kids

[markpkessinger]

14. I think there is room for activism on many fronts . . .

. . . and it isn't fair to expect any particular individual to cover all of them.

[TexasProgresive]

16. That's quite a judgement on your part

Sr. Megan spent a good part of her life as a sister feeding the minds of some kids.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Rice
Megan Rice was educated in Catholic schools and joined the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus at age 18.[1][3] She was trained as an elementary school teacher and taught in the early grades in Mount Vernon, New York. Through part-time study at Fordham and Villanova universities she earned a bachelor's degree in biology from Villanova in 1957, then studied cellular biology at Boston College, where she received a master's degree.[1][3][4] She then served as teacher in Nigeria and Ghana from 1962 to 2004.[1]

[Judi Lynn]

17. Thanks for sharing this background. Excellent. n/t

[markpkessinger]

19. It would actually be an unusual thing to find a nun . . .

. . . who HADN'T spent considerable time along the way working with the poor.

[wordpix]

20. kids won't have a good life if these nukes blow

Hello? Do you realize there is STILL nowhere to put the nuke waste 45 yrs. after these facilities were built? The highly radioactive spent fuel rods were placed in pools of water "temporarily" and are still there, just waiting for some Fuku-type disaster. No one wants a nuke waste repository in his backyard, and no one wants the waste traveling on the highways and railroads. Something the geniuses in the nuke industry and their Congressional and state puppets should have thought about 45 yr. ago.

And that is just ONE of the problems of this industry.

[meow2u3]

13. There is some justice in this world

Thank God for the appeals court, at least in this case. I don't think the judges who overturned her conviction for sabotage took very kindly to throwing nuns in prison when there was no intent to sabotage.

[markpkessinger]

15. Here's a fuller description of the way these charges came about . . .

From Firedog Lake:

On June 28, 2012, Megan Rice, a nun, and Greg Boertje-Obed and Michael Walli, both veterans, cut through multiple fences around the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

The activists were able to get to a Department of Energy building with enriched uranium. “There the trio spray-painted antiwar slogans, hung crime tape and banners with biblical phrases, splashed blood, and sang hymns,” according to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision [PDF].

The activists struck the building with small hammers, and their action effectively delayed a shipment that was supposed to arrive that afternoon.

Initially, the government charged the activists with trespassing and “injuring government property. When they refused to plead guilty, prosecutors essentially made a vindictive move and charged them with “violating the peacetime provision of the Sabotage Act,” which “Congress enacted during World War II.”

The attempt to prosecute these folks under the Sabotage Act was a vile, malicious act of vengeance by the Holder Justice Department, and was something for which the President, if he had any integrity, would issue a formal apology for. Not holding my breath, though.

[Judi Lynn]

18. Megan Rice represents the honorable side of the human race. Prosecuting her seems perverted. n/t

[24601]

21. Civil disobedience has respectability precisely because individuals are willing to risk their

own freedom.