Update: On Saturday night, May 16, 2015, we can report that al three Transform Now Plowshares activists are out of jail.
Attorneys for Sister Megan Rice, Michael Walli and Greg Boertje-Obed plan to seek the protesters’ immediate release from federal prison following last week’s appeals court ruling that overturned their conviction on sabotage charges for the July 28, 2012 break-in at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge.
Bill Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans and a member of the legal team, said attorneys hope to free the three pending the government’s possible appeal of the ruling by the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals or the resentencing hearing that’s tentatively scheduled for July 8 in Knoxville.
Attorneys for the government and the defense participated in a teleconference Monday with U.S. District Judge Amul Thapar, who presided at the trial and sentencing two years ago, about possible dates for resentencing if the case proceeds in that direction.
Rice, Walli and Boertje-Obed have been incarcerated ever since a federal jury found them guilty May 8, 2013, on charges of sabotage and damaging government property. If the appeals court ruling holds, reversing the sabotage conviction, the case will be remanded to Thapar for resentencing on the second charge.
Rice, a Catholic nun who was 82 years old at the time of the Y-12-break-in, was originally sentenced to 2 years and 11 months, while Walli and Boertje-Obed each got a sentence of 5 years and 2 months. But the sabotage convictions weighed heavily in those sentences, and the appeal court decision indicated the likelihood that the time served may already meet the sentencing requirements on the other conviction for damaging government property.
“It’s our position that these folks have already served their time if the sabotage (conviction) is thrown out,” Quigley said Tuesday. “We hope that all of them would be given just time served.”
Quigley said attorneys are still researching what path to take to get the protesters out of prison as soon as possible.
At this point, the case still resides with the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, and that’s where a motion for release would likely be filed, he said.
The U.S. government has 14 days from the release of the appeals court ruling (May 8) to decide whether to ask for a rehearing of the appeal before the three-judge panel in Cincinnati, seek a hearing before the entire Sixth Circuit Court or appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The government has not announced its intentions, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Theodore, who prosecuted the case, declined to comment earlier this week.
Rice is currently housed in a federal prison in Brooklyn, N.Y, while Walli is serving his sentence at the McKean Federal Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania. Boertje-Obed is at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas.
The three protesters, who called themselves the Transform Now Plowshares, shocked the security world when they broke into Y-12 during the predawn hours of July 28, 2012. Y-12 was considered to be one of the most secure facilities in the United States.
The protesters cut through four fences, ultimately reaching Y-12’s high-security storehouse for bomb-grade uranium. They defaced the exterior with paint and human blood and did an estimated $8,000 in damages.