Why Are We in Vieques? (Cont.)

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Why Are We in Vieques? (Cont.)

I FLEW TO SAN JUAN on July 5. At the Caribe Hilton, Reverend Jesse Jackson signaled me from a beach chair. His wife, Jacqueline, had just been released from ten days in jail for protesting at Camp Garcia. Jackson had returned to Vieques with five congresspeople to attend our trial. "Suffering is often the most powerful tool against injustice and oppression," he told me. "If Jesus had plea-bargained the crucifixion, we wouldn't have the faith."

Our defense was based on the doctrine of necessity; a defendant cannot be convicted of trespassing if he shows he entered the land to prevent a greater crime from being committed. We intended to prove that we had engaged in civil disobedience for a single purpose: to prevent a criminal violation of the Endangered Species Act by the Navy that the federal court had refused to redress.

Our trial took about seven hours. The U.S. attorneys were deputized Naval Reserve officers. When our lawyers tried to present evidence to support our necessity defense, Judge Laffitte quieted them. "I'm not going to allow political views, philosophical views, none of that," he said. After the Navy put on its case, the judge announced that he found us guilty and said he would allow statements prior to sentencing.

Mario Cuomo spoke eloquently on our behalf: "We ask the court to recall that this nation was conceived in the civil disobedience that preceded the Revolutionary War, the acts of civil disobedience that were precipitated by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, in the famous Sit-Down Strikes of 1936 and 1937, all through the valiant struggle for civil rights in the 1960s, and the movement against the Vietnam War. Always they were treated by the courts one way: not like crimes committed for personal gain or out of pure malice, but as technical violations, designed to achieve a good purpose."

After the allocutions, the other defendants and I stood to hear our sentences. Judge Laffitte called Myrta Sanes, the sister of David Sanes, and let her go with six months probation. Several Vieques fishermen had been arrested on the day of our protest; the judge sentenced them to 30 days apiece.

I am dead sure that when Judge Laffitte entered the courtroom, he intended to give Dennis and me 40 days or more. Luckily for us, perhaps, he called Norma Burgos first. In the course of sentencing her to 40 days, he rebuked her: "You are a senator... I cannot condone such action." Burgos responded in kind: "The ones who are violating the greater law are the members of the Navy. What are you waiting for in order to come and arrest them and judge them?"

"You are becoming defiant!" Laffitte shouted. "It does not behoove you to defy the court."

Norma continued to argue until the judge hammered down his gavel. "OK," he said, "I'll change that sentence to 60 days." This did not slow Norma down. She would have worked her way up to about a year in prison if a kindhearted U.S. Marshal hadn't grabbed her and hauled her from the courtroom, still berating Laffitte.

The storm having passed, Judge Laffitte seemed inclined to be lenient toward us. When he said 30 days, I was ecstatic. After subtracting the three days I'd already served, I'd be home by August 1, the day my kids were to begin their summer vacation.

When we arrived on the special "Vieques cell block" that night at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Guaynabo, we were greeted by about 60 of the 711 people arrested on Vieques since May 2000. Cheering disobedientessang, beat congas, abrazoed, and then treated us to a nearly endless ovation.

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