The St. Patrick Four: The feds confront the Anti-War Movement

On September 19 the first federal conspiracy trial of civilian war resisters to the US invasion of Iraq will take place in Binghamton, New York, a declining and decaying city in upstate New York, 3 hours northwest of New York City. This is the second trial of the “St Patrick Four” – they were acquitted a year earlier by a jury in Ithaca, New York by a 9 to 3 vote in which the presiding Judge David Peeble conceded that the four had represented themselves “probably better than some of the attorneys that practice in this court.”

The trial of the St. Pat Four has national significance because it raises several fundamental issues regarding constitutional freedoms and the Bush-Gonzalez ongoing campaign to silence and intimidate dissent and public expressions of opposition to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The trial of the St. Pat Four will establish whether the Federal Government can jail dissenters engaging in civil disobedience for up to six years and fine them up to $250,000 on feckless charges of “conspiracy to impede an officer of the United States by threat, intimidation or force”. Even more ominous, in terms of the procedures for a fair trial, the senior US District Judge for Northern New York, Thomas McAvoy, has ruled that the defendants cannot discuss the reasons and motivation for their action. According to McAvoy, “This court offers no opinion on the war in Iraq as it is entirely irrelevant to this matter…assuming an illegal war, it does not provide a justification for violating the criminal laws of the United States.”