Nuclear Weapons

Sister Megan Rice with Michael Walli, 68, a veteran and Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, a carpenter face decades in prison for protest against nuclear weapons. We continue to ask for your support and help. On October 1, we received word that Judge Amul Thapar denied the motion to dismiss the sabotage conviction as well as denied the motion for a new trial. For complete background information please visit www.transformnowplowshares@wordpress.com. The TNP support team therefore asks that letters to Judge Thapar continue and should encourage him to sentence with downward departures from the high sentencing guidelines which can range up to 12 years. Even if you've written a letter in the past or sent in a pre-written postcard, you can still write another. They seem to have an effect as Judge Thapar has referred to the high volume of letters and postcards and he has posted a few on legal record himself.

An octogenarian Roman Catholic nun, jailed for breaking into a nuclear weapons facility in Tennessee, is facing up to 30 years in prison after losing her plea for the most serious charge to be dropped. Sister Megan Rice, 83, and two fellow peace activists staged a non-violent protest to symbolically disarm the Oak Ridge Y-12 nuclear weapons facility, home to the nation's main supply of highly enriched uranium, in July. They were initially charged with trespassing, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison, but felony charges quickly followed. They were eventually convicted of interfering with national security and damage to federal property.