Federal judge rules against Kings Bay Plowshares’ motion to dismiss charges under RFRA, October 21 trial date set

UPDATE: Trial date set for October 21.

BRUNSWICK, GA – On August 26, a federal judge denied all the pre-trial motions of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7. The activists had urged U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood to dismiss their charges for numerous legal reasons as well as the fact that the hundreds of first strike nuclear weapons on the submarines based at Kings Bay Naval Base are illegal and immoral.

The judge found the Plowshares did establish a prima facie case under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act because they were sincerely religiously motivated to challenge the nuclear weapons at the Naval Base. Wood also found that the government’s actions substantially burdened their right to exercise their religious beliefs. However, the judge went on to rule that the government had a compelling interest in keeping unauthorized people out of the base and the prosecution of the Plowshares activists was the least restrictive means of protecting the safety of the base.

The Plowshares argued that the government bringing multiple duplicative charges threatening 25 years is far from the least restrictive option to keep unauthorized people out of the base. On April 4, 2018 the seven activists entered the naval base in St. Mary’s, Georgia. They undertook various nonviolent actions such as pouring blood, hammering on a statue of a Trident II D5 missile, and placing crime scene tape in front of the entrance to a headquarters building.

“We took these actions to say the violence stops here, the perpetual war stops here – at Kings Bay, and all the despair it represents,” said Clare Grady, one of the Kings Bay activists. “We took these actions grounded in faith and the belief that Jesus meant what He said when He said, ‘Love your enemies,’ and in so doing offers us our only option for hope.”

The next step is a jury trial in federal court presided over by Lisa Wood in Brunswick, Georgia. No trial date has yet been set. The judge wrote the trial would be scheduled “promptly.”

The judge’s 19-page opinion is posted here.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AUGUST 27, 2019

Plowshares Trial Set for October 21

BRUNSWICK, GA – A day after denying their motions for dismissal, a federal judge has set the date for a trial by jury of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7.

Jury selection will begin on Monday, October 21, 2019 at 9 a.m. at the federal courthouse in Brunswick, GA.

Supporters from throughout the country are expected to attend the trial. Earlier this month nearly 100 people attended events around the hearing held by Judge Lisa Wood, who will oversee the October trial.

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General: kingsbayplowshares@gmail.com

WEBSITE: www.kingsbayplowshares7.org

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from the Brunswick News

Court denies Plowshares’ motions to dismiss

By WES WOLFE wwolfe@thebrunswicknews.com
Aug 29, 2019

Hours of testimony and extensive pages of briefs and responses led to a 19-page order by U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood who, Monday, ruled against seven anti-nuclear peace activists who broke into Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in April 2018 in what they termed was a religious protest covered by federal law.

The Kings Bay action is one of a series of similar actions, dating back around 40 years, by the Plowshares movement. However, this is the first time a group of defendants used the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 as a defense to criminal charges.

“RFRA cannot be used as a defense to a criminal charge if the federal law at issue did not substantially burden the defendant’s exercise of religion,” Wood wrote. “Thus, a threshold inquiry is whether defendants can show that the federal laws at issue substantially burdened the exercise of their sincerely held beliefs.

“Notably, the beliefs and resulting actions that are at issue are those that gave rise to this action. In other words, the beliefs ay issue are those that defendants testified led them to their actions at Kings Bay on April 4th and 5th, 2018, and the actions at issue are the defendants’ actions at Kings Bay on that night.”

Like Magistrate Judge Benjamin Cheesbro, Wood acknowledges the beliefs expressed by the defendants are sincerely held. The question is the burden on expressing it. Multiple defendants testified over the course of the case that they needed to break into the base and conduct a symbolic denuclearization — what the government considers vandalism and property damage — to properly exercise their beliefs.

Wood also explains that the federal laws meant to prevent the defendants’ actions, the laws under which they’re being prosecuted, the laws do present a substantial burden, establishing a prima facie case for the defense under RFRA.

However, Wood goes on to describe how the federal government has a compelling interest at Kings Bay to maintain tight security over a submarine base known for being a location of nuclear weapons and other military assets.

Wood wrote, “Because non-application of the laws at issue to defendants for their actions at Kings Bay on April 4-5, 2018, would not have achieved the government’s desired goals of ensuring the safety of those on the base, the security of the assets housed there and the smooth operation of the base — and those operations elsewhere that rely on the smooth operations of the base — the government has met its burden of showing that the least-restrictive means of furthering its compelling interests in these circumstances is the application of the laws at issue to defendants for their actions….”

With denying of the motions to dismiss, the case now continues toward trial, which Tuesday was set for Oct. 21 at 9 a.m.

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from National Catholic Reporter

Judge denies nuclear protestors’ religious freedom defense

Aug 29, 2019

by Yonat Shimron, Religion News Service

A federal judge has denied a request by a group of Catholic peace activists to dismiss charges against them for breaking into a nuclear submarine base in Kings Bay, Georgia, last year to protest nuclear weapons.

The seven activists, individually and through their lawyers, used a novel defense, citing the Religion Freedom Restoration Act, a 1993 federal law that says the government may not burden the faith practices of a person with sincerely held religious beliefs.

But Judge Lisa Godbey Wood, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, denied that defense and scheduled a jury trial for Oct. 21.

The activists, known as the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, face up to 25 years in prison each for trespassing on the U.S. Navy base, which houses six Trident submarines designed to carry nearly 200 nuclear warheads apiece.

The seven, mostly middle-aged or elderly, will each stand trial on three felonies and one misdemeanor: destruction of property on a naval installation, depredation of government property, trespass and conspiracy.

In her denial, Wood concluded that the activists were sincere in their religious faith and that the government had burdened that religious faith by prosecuting them.

But the judge found that the government has a compelling interest in the safety of the people working at the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base and in the security of the nuclear weapons housed there. Therefore, she found that the legal charges leveled against the activists were “the least restrictive means of furthering its compelling interests in these circumstances.” Her 19-page opinion denies all the defendants’ motions.

On the night of April 4, 2018, the group stole onto the Kings Bay base in St. Marys, Georgia, cut a padlock and later a security fence, spilled blood on Navy wall insignia, spray-painted anti-war slogans on a walkway and banged on a monument to nuclear warfare using hammers made of melted-down guns. Their goal, they said, was to symbolically disarm the weapons.

The group is part of a 39-year-old anti-nuclear movement called Plowshares, inspired by the prediction of the biblical prophet Isaiah that the nations of the world shall “beat their swords into plowshares.” Its activists have made a signature of breaking into nuclear weapons bases to hammer on buildings and military hardware and pour human blood on them.

The defendants are all residents of Catholic Worker houses, a collection of 200 independent houses across the country that feed and house the poor. They include a Jesuit priest, a former nun and a granddaughter of Dorothy Day, a co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement who is under consideration by the Catholic Church for canonization as a saint.

Now it will be up to the group to convince the court that the Plowshares group ought to be able to present experts who can testify about Catholic social teachings on nuclear weapons and why non-violent actions protesting nuclear weapons care consistent with their faith.

“The fight is going to be over how much of their faith can they testify to and what other kinds of evidence will the court allow the jury to hear,” said William P. Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, who is helping the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 argue their case pro bono.

Quigley said he expected a flurry of pretrial motions on admissible testimony before the Oct. 21 trial in a federal courtroom in Brunswick, Georgia, about 70 miles north of Jacksonville, Florida.

“Traditionally, governments want to restrict the amount of evidence put on. They want to focus on the lock, the fence, the paint,” he said. “The defendants want to put their actions into the context of their faith and in the context of what it says about nuclear weapons.”

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