Kangaroo Court Looming for Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Critics [View all]

[limpyhobbler]

Three disarmament radicals that snuck into the Y-12 nuclear weapons complex last summer are preparing for their February 2013 trial, and face the prospect that any mention of nuclear weapons will be forbidden.

Y-12 is the 811-acre site in Oak Ridge, Tenn. that’s been building H-bombs and contaminating workers and the environment since 1943. On July 28, Sr. Megan Rice, Michael Walli and Greg Boertje-Obed snipped through fences and walked up to the new Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility building. They unfurled banners, spray-painted the building with phrases such as “Woe to the empire of blood,” poured blood, prayed and broke bread.

Now they face felony charges that carry a maximum of $500,000 in fines and 15 years in prison. Additionally, in what looks like an attempt to scare them into pleading guilty now, federal prosecutors have mentioned bringing two heavier charges, including sabotage “during wartime,” which together carry up to 50 years imprisonment.

As with previous cases of symbolic damage to nuclear war systems, a kangaroo court is being arranged in advance. If the government gets its way again, the trial judge will keep facts about nuclear weapons away from the jurors and make sure that questions about the bomb’s outlaw status are left out of jury instructions. Instructions are the juror’s marching orders, the last thing they hear before starting deliberations.
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via: http://www.zcommunications.org/kangaroo-court-looming-for-y-12-nuclear-weapons-critics-by-john-laforge