SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Beat the Prosecution, presented by Northern Virginia criminal defense and DUI lawyer Jonathan Katz, where we are here to regularly present you information and ideas for beating your prosecution as best as possible. Nothing on any of our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or for individuals who have paid for a consultation. And now for your host, John Katz.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Hello, everybody. This is John Katz, a beat the prosecution. I'm a criminal defense and DUI defense lawyer in Fairfax, Northern Virginia. I repeatedly tell you how excited I am about the guests I have, including this one, and how much I have trouble controlling my excitement. And with this guest, Susan Crane, this is my first client that I'm ever interviewing for this show. Well, I say client, I mean she ended up being represented by Ramsey Clark. Ramsey and I were co-defending a bunch of these defendants for a plowshares action. And uh what a pleasure it was dealing with Susan and Elizabeth Walls, her co-defendant, uh Steve Kelly, as well as Phil Berrigan. I'm trying to adjust the scammer here. Uh Susan is the second plowshares activist I'm interviewing. This is not Overkill. The previous one was Mark Colville from New Haven when Susan was in jail. Susan, welcome out of prison jail, whatever you call it in Germany. Please introduce yourself.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Well, I'm uh I'm Susan Crane. I for some reason I can't see uh everything got moved. I'm on the way. Um I'm Susan Crane, and I'm here in Redwood City right now, and I'm just back from Germany where I was in prison for uh about seven and a half months for uh resisting nuclear weapons that US nuclear weapons that are deployed in Germany.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Got it. Uh where did you get convicted? Uh was there a trial? Uh was this uh to what extent was the American military involved with this? And and what was the facility?

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Well, they the uh US has nuclear weapons deployed in five European countries, and uh this is against the non-proliferation treaty that says that nuclear nations won't share their weapons with uh non-nuclear nations. And then the non-nuclear nations like Germany and the Netherlands and Turkey have all signed the same non-proliferation treaty that says they won't accept them. But nevertheless, they're there in Germany at a uh in Rhineland False, an area in Germany that um has this base, a German base, the Buschel Air Force Base. And that's where the U.S. nuclear weapons are.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

Okay, before we return to this action, please tell everybody how long you have been a peace activist, what led you to it, your involvement with the Catholic worker movement and the plowshares movement, and anything else, because you have a fascinating story.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Oh, well, that's that's a long story, John.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

I said it was fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Well, I went when I went out of uh college, I went into the Peace Corps because I thought that um education was the problem-solving thing that we needed to do around the world and that would bring about peace and everything we love. And I got to Ethiopia and I um was surprised to find some of the same corporations that I see in the United States were already there in Ethiopia. Well, that was a surprise, and then I found out that the the US military was also there, it was hidden in a communications base, but the US military was keeping a tab on what happened and was uh keeping Haile Selassie in his power, and that um you know that was shocking to me at the time that the US was meddling in in the development of that country, so so people your peace corps work was in Ethiopia, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:28

Was it in Addis Ababa or elsewhere?

SPEAKER_01 4:30

No, I was out in the provinces. I wanted to be away from the cities, I was in the far provinces.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

And what was the name of the province?

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Well, I was in Goba, Bali Goba for a while, and uh uh a little town called Dila for a while, and what and I was teaching school.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

Teaching school. What years was this, and what were you teaching?

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Uh I was supposed to be teaching math, but actually I ended up teaching English, which is what they needed more from me, and I taught uh like seventh and eighth grades. And this was when was about uh 68, 69, 67, that area.

SPEAKER_02 5:13

That's when I was in kindergarten, the first grade. Okay. And uh then after you were in the Peace Corps, what what then uh did you do?

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Well, then I realized the change needed to be to happen here in the States, and I when I came back, we were in the middle of Vietnam, so I was resisting the war making here then. And so things continued from there.

SPEAKER_02 5:39

How did you end up coming to the Catholic worker movement and the play shares movement?

SPEAKER_01 5:45

So um, you know, I always wherever I was, I was working with communities and working with getting food for people and things that made sense to me like that. But also um I in that process I learned trades, uh plumbing and a little electrical work. And I had children. Um and so uh, you know, when you have kids, you've gotta work and support them all. It's and that's wonderful. And um and so I was out here in California with my community and working, and um folks continued to resist, you know, and go to prison. These these folks, um Plaushers folks, that I kept reading about, and I was doing little actions like at Concord Naval Weapons Station or or Livermore Lab here in California, but I needed to stay home and take care of my kids and make enough money to pay the rent and all that stuff. So I couldn't do I I did small things. I did uh tax resistance, we did tax events, war tax resistance events in town and things like that. But but then uh the Plashers action started around 1980, and I read about them, I wrote to people in prison and got letters back and learned about it, and um, and I felt continually restless in that I felt compliant with the war making of this government, and um I I felt I I needed to do more, and so when I was able, when my children were older and I was able to uh make a bigger commitment, I could think about doing a plowshares action, which for me seemed to just make sense, you know.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

So what came first, your Catholic worker involvement, plow shares, or both?

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Um, when I did the first um plowshares action, I was wasn't was uh teaching school.

SPEAKER_03 8:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

Um in in Ukaya, I was a school teacher. So I wasn't living in a Catholic worker then.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

And do you have a Catholic background?

SPEAKER_01 8:16

No. I well I'm no, I was Protestant.

SPEAKER_02 8:21

Are are there many uh plowshares activists and Catholic workers activists who who did not grow up with the Catholic tradition?

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Oh, sure. The Catholic worker includes people who are Buddhists, who are Jewish, who are atheists. Everybody's welcome.

SPEAKER_02 8:38

And of course, in in French, the word Catholic pronounced catholic actually means uh uh universal.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Yes, that's the idea, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

Okay, so how many plow shares? And I'm what I'm doing is I'm telling everyone we have a uh podcast interview already with uh plow shares and activist Mark Colville, who was on at least one action with Susan. So I'm not going to uh do a lot of overlap with that. You can go ahead and find that C O L V I L L E for that uh podcast at podcast.beatheprosecution.com. I'm gonna try to do some uh new territory uh or or additional territory with uh Susan. Susan, how many plowshares uh actions have you been involved with?

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Well, I've been a participant in four of them.

SPEAKER_02 9:28

And which names have have those actions been?

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Well, the first one was here in California at Sunnyvale, uh, where Steve Kelly and I went into Lockheed Martin, where they make the trident missiles. They actually make the sections and then put them together.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Was that the one in 1980?

SPEAKER_01 9:47

No, it was in 1995.

SPEAKER_02 9:49

And what was that action called?

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Uh, I think it was Jubilee Plowshares West.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

Yes, and how many uh how many plowshares activists were were in that action?

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Steve Steve Kelly. Father Steve Kelly had a church in San Jose, was a pastor there or priest there, and I was teaching school.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

So you were the plowshares too.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

Well, we didn't call ourselves that.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

Well, actually, that was twice, perhaps the I think there was a plow shares one, if I'm not mistaken. I know I my understanding is with uh Katya Kama Soric, who did at least one plowshares action, it fascinated me. She ended up uh going to Harvard Law School. I'm having trouble finding where she is now, but my understanding is that she did her own action where uh she left cookies out for the uh people, this military installation, then went and uh went hammering on the uh, I guess the control uh mechanism for some sort of uh uh weapons facility. I I I guess that was a plowshares one.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

She was at Vandenberg Air Force Base, I think.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

That that was the one she was at?

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Yes, I believe so.

SPEAKER_02 10:54

So, with this action you did with Steve Kelly, uh what was the trial like and uh what kind of sentence did he get?

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Well, don't you want to know what we did?

SPEAKER_02 11:06

Well, of course I want to know what you did.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Okay, so we so Lockheed Martin is this huge, you know, they have they have blocks of buildings and where they plan and make these these weapons. They make the the weapons, the missiles that carry the nuclear weapons in the Trident submarines. And so they have this one building where they put them all together. They they have the um the all the sections. They're about they're big sections and they're about six feet tall or uh four feet tall each section, and they make all the sections separate and put them together at the end. And then um they get armed somewhere else. But we we jumped over the fence, we we had a way, some help and got over the fence and walked through a parking lot, and we weren't sure how we were going to get in the building, but as we walked up to the building, this huge bay door just opened up in front of us, and without breaking stride, we walked right in. And we were we sort of we we had uh sort of slacks and clothes on that people might have when they went to work, and we had IDs that said peacemaker, but kind of looked like the Lockheed Martin IDs, and uh we had a clipboard, so we blended in, we thought, and we walked around in in the hallway and opened different doors to try to find what we were looking for, and we found where they were making the trident missiles, right? And um, we walked up to this one guy, he had a uh a pneumatic tool of some sort, and he was there working on the on the uh section, and um we walked up to him and we said, uh, you know, we need mean you no harm, but we've come to disarm this. You'd better call security. And we got our hammers out and we start hammering, and I got my bottle of blood out and poured it on the missile section of the missile, and the guy's watching us. And Steve told him again, he said, You'd better call security because we don't want him to lose his job, right? Yes, so then then we looked up and we found uh Steve found plans across the aisle and another section. We hammered on that a little bit, got the plans, and then we laid everything out with our banner and we knelt down and said the Lord's Prayer. And then looked up, and I looked up, and there's a circle. All the workers made a big circle around us, and they were looking at us.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

A circle, interesting.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

I mean, not close, but but they were watching, watching, and this one guy came back in back of us, and he walked by. And as he walked by, he whispered in my ear, that was very courageous. Wow, walked on. Wow, and then the police came, you know, and arrested us and took us to court.

SPEAKER_02 14:20

So so you you you really and you really engaged these employees there? I did something, both he did, and and I take it Steve, doesn't Steve always wear his uh his priest outfit or whatever you call it when when he does these actions, wasn't he wearing it then?

SPEAKER_03 14:38

Uh I don't know he wasn't.

SPEAKER_02 14:39

No, he wasn't because you were blending in. On this one, he wasn't.

SPEAKER_03 14:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:45

Okay, so you got arrested, and there was a uh what was there, a jury trial?

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Yes, we had a jury trial, and um one of the public defenders in San Jose, the San Jose Federal Courthouse, helped us quite a bit, and um but you know, the same the judges didn't want to uh listen to our affirmative defenses, and right, and when um when I was in front of Judge Ware at a pretrial hearing, we were defending ourselves, yes, I said, but you have to listen because we're bringing up treaty law, international law, and I, you know, said, and under the constitution, this law has to be upheld in every court by every judge, right? And and he said to me, Oh, I don't have time to teach you law 101. That was his answer.

SPEAKER_02 15:43

He thought he knew better. Well, yeah, like so many of the judges I appear in front of, even when they don't. Yeah, so and so did he go through the whole trial, or did you did you stop participating at any point?

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Oh, we didn't really stop participating. I I um insisted on reading the Nuremberg principles and uh he sent the jury out. Okay people in the courtroom finished reading them, but we um he he also uh didn't sentence us uh so badly either.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

What was your sentence?

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Well the the the um claim was that we did four hundred thousand dollars worth of damage, and he said, and that's supposed to, you know, that would give you more time if you did all that damage. Of course, I argued that we enhanced the item because it couldn't be used to kill people, but but he said, uh, well, I don't think you did that much damage or something, and he he just reduced our um guidelines.

SPEAKER_02 17:04

So there's a difference between the the value of the property you're allegedly damaging and the value of the damage. I mean, the value of the damage is usually always less than than the value of the property.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Well, they said that um because we had hammered on this section, it happened to be the equipment section. Yeah, and and because of the stress of our hammering, that it might be cracked so they could never use it.

SPEAKER_02 17:31

Might so what was your uh sentence and Steve's sentence?

SPEAKER_01 17:35

So I I think we both got the same uh 15 months, is what I remember.

SPEAKER_02 17:41

And then what was your next plowshares action?

SPEAKER_01 17:44

So the next one was uranium? No, two years later, the Prince of Peace. Prince of Peace, and that was where that was up at Bath Ironworks. We went on a ship in Maine, yeah. The USS Sullivan's.

SPEAKER_02 18:00

And wasn't that where uh Mark Colville was one of the uh defenders?

SPEAKER_01 18:03

Yes, Mark Colville and Phil Berrigan and Tom Lewis and Steve Baggerly.

SPEAKER_02 18:10

Yes, uh Mark has told me in depth about uh that action. Uh for that action, did you uh were you out on pretrial release before the trial?

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Or or were you on No, we were in the main jail the whole time.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

Okay, so roughly for for how many years out of your life have you spent uh detained in a jail or a prison total?

SPEAKER_01 18:35

Well, it it it's getting close to seven now.

SPEAKER_02 18:41

And how do you bear it? Is it enough just to have your your conviction to community and knowing everyone's supporting you and helping out the people in the jail and having your religious tradition is is something else? Is that enough?

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Usually uh at least in the US jails, I was able to feel I was you you I I could do useful things inside the jail. I could teach or I could do something that helped the other women there. And um besides writing to people and and um continuing our action in the prison, as it were, by writing to people and being there. In uh Germany it was a little different, but it was um there was a lot of goodness in it.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

Okay, so in Germany, jumping up there, to what extent was the American or were the American uh officials involved indirectly or directly with your prosecution? And what was that trial like? I take it maybe they don't have juries in Germany, and and what was the incarceration system like over there?

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Well, the courts were very different. The courts uh let me talk about international law, they they let me put forward an affirmative defense, they let the lawyer put forward an affirmative defense, they didn't pay any attention to it. But at least we could say it. And and um Germany does have a tradition of the where the in the past, when the Pershing uh missiles, cruise missiles were in the country and deployed there from the US, they got rid of them through resistance. And the judges heard people time after time talking about them, and finally the judges and the jurists and the lawyers and the prosecutors even got together and decided to risk resist them themselves and join them on the on the lines, the picket lines, on the lines blockading the base. Okay, so uh so there's there was hope that the judges would really listen to what we had to say and and not find us guilty.

SPEAKER_02 21:01

So we're found guilty, and uh have you already said everything about what this action involved, or is there more details to it?

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Oh well, what we did was we um this group called the Nonviolent Action for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, the the GAA in Germany is a group of about 64 different peace groups, and they organize they wanted to organize a peace camp right outside the base of the base. It was a big, a big area with where we could set up tents and a shower and a kitchen and everything, lots of room. And it was right next to the base. And so this these 64 peace groups got together, and Marianne Cooper was the organizer of that camp. So she came to the United States and with John LaForge gave a Talk at a National Catholic worker gathering about these US nuclear weapons that were based in Germany and in Europe. And for most of us who've resisted nuclear weapons here in the US, we had it wasn't, at least it wasn't in my mind that we also had weapons deployed in Europe.

SPEAKER_02 22:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

So this was kind and and the fact that all that the German people didn't want them there either. So that was was important. And then they invited us, John and Marion invited us to join them over there. And so the next summer, uh John at Nookwatch organized a U.S. delegation, and there were nine of us who went over there to resist these to join the peacemakers there.

SPEAKER_02 22:59

Okay, so the total number of defendants in your Germany action was nine or ten?

SPEAKER_01 23:04

No, no, there were there have been hundreds of people that have been arrested there at that base.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

But we were there for about 10 days during the international camp. And during that time there were uh there were doctors from IPPNW, this big group of uh of um physicians for the um what's it just abolition of nuclear weapons and there were um Catholic workers from uh Germany, the Catholic workers from Amsterdam, from England. There were just this glorious confusion and mess and wonderful organization of people.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

Wow. And uh so for your trial, were do was it just you who was the defendant, or were there other defendants at uh at your trial?

SPEAKER_01 24:04

No, well what happened was um we did we did blockades at the base, but the the police uh they would move us, but they didn't arrest us for blockades. But when we did a go-in, we went inside the base, then they usually often arrested us. And so um when they arrested us, they first uh brought the German people to court. So the German people went to court, uh got some of the and fined, and some of them had to pay the fine, and some of them went to prison. And then they uh they uh arrested or they brought to court the uh the people from Amsterdam. And they went to prison. And then the people from the United States finally they brought us to court. It was years later.

SPEAKER_02 25:02

Yes. So how many days was this trial and how many other defendants were in the courtroom with you during this trial?

SPEAKER_01 25:07

Well, I was on trial by myself because because John Laforge from the US was also on trial and had gone and was going to prison, and Dennis Duvall was also on trial, but I John and I I think John was also by himself. There weren't so I went on trial by myself.

SPEAKER_02 25:32

So we'll go on with the language dynamic, and uh were you pro se and or did you have any kind of help from a a German lawyer?

SPEAKER_01 25:41

I was I was planning to go pro se because I didn't know uh the the other German lawyer who was helping people was too busy. Anna Bushel, really good lawyer, she was helping some of the other resistors. But there's only, as you know, you you only have so many hours in the day. So she uh she said no. And so I thought, well, I'll go pro se. And then um Annabelle Dwyer was talking to me, you know, we were chatting back and forth, and she thought, well, let me ask the um uh that international group of lawyers that's against nuclear weapons, uh. And so she wrote something to them, and all of a sudden in my mailbox there was this email saying, Oh, I hear you need some help and your trial's coming up, so you'd better call me right away.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

How about that?

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Yeah, how about that? And it was from this um man called Milan Martine.

SPEAKER_03 26:44

Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

And he he was he has been so wonderful for me. He's been at each trial and um I've had three. Two at the lower court and then one at the appeal court. Uh right. And then he's done the paperwork for the next two courts up to the even th through the federal court, which is like our Supreme Court. And then we took it to the um European Court of Human Rights.

SPEAKER_02 27:14

Okay, so this lawyer uh he's he's a German lawyer.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

Yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

And his English is, I guess, is pr is good, or else your German's good?

SPEAKER_01 27:24

No, my German's not so good. His English is very good.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

And so then you had an interpreter with you in the courtroom.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 27:33

What was the quality of the interpretation?

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Well, I couldn't the one the first trial I could understand the person. That was pretty good.

SPEAKER_02 27:42

The second trial um was a little harder, but the the one in Koblenz, I really the her accent, I couldn't really understand her, but you know You know, Susan, there there is so much ignorance and sensitivity and coldness, and a lot of the courts I'm in about people who don't speak English as a first language. French is my second language, I've been speaking it for 48 years, and I still cannot go through an entire French movie probably and understand everything that's going on. And uh, you know, I'll see videos of my clients being investigated, for instance, for a DWI case, and the cop will say, Why are you saying you need a Spanish interpreter? You've been speaking English to me up to now. Yeah, I've been speaking up to 50 words of English, and you have to have a fund of at least 50,000 or more words of English to sufficiently act in English.

SPEAKER_03 28:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:37

And then you'll have a judge say, So what's wrong with the interpreter? She's bilingual. And I'll say, Well, not only do I do I know the faults she made, because I speak Spanish too, but it's obvious about the stuff that that interpreter didn't and didn't uh didn't interpret. You heard a testimony about someone named Joe Smith allegedly punch punching Bob Hunt, and you heard the interpreter say Jane Nathan uh had lunch with with Jill Hart, you know, so it's just really something. And so um, you know, it's a good thing you had a good lawyer to uh probably transcend that. But but did you tell? I mean, if you testified though at your trial, you had to understand what's going on. And you did testify, as you say.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

Well, it's the trials are run a diff a little differently. Um like I pretty much knew what I was gonna just say in general, and I would give the translator a translation. I'd give the judge and the I'd and the prosecutor a uh translation of of what I generally was gonna say.

SPEAKER_02 29:45

I didn't always stick to that script, but did you get cross-examined by the prosecutor?

SPEAKER_01 29:52

You know, it's it's it's not quite like that. You know, the prosecutor is like there's the judge and then there's the uh the person representing the state. And that person is supposed to um be neutral? Is that the right word? I have to find the good the good parts of what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

A lot different than the American prosecutorial.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

Because they'll they'll say, well, she did this, but on the other hand, she had, you know, she thought it was a good idea, she had good intentions, or whatever. I mean, it's sort of different, and um but the effect is the same, guilty.

SPEAKER_02 30:40

Yes. Well, uh now I'm gonna jump back. So your third plow shares action, was that the depleted uranium case? Yes. And that's when I first met that's when I first met you. Well, I don't know if I told you this or if you heard this indirectly, Susan. Uh, when I started doing criminal defense in 1991, I came up with this brilliant idea uh that before having handled any criminal cases, I was with a uh 25-Laura corporate law firm in DC at the time, which is considered small over there. I was two years out of law school, and I was really chomping in the bit to switch into criminal defense. So I joined the National Association of Criminal Defense Laws and a local state uh criminal defense attorneys association, got that on my resume to send out to public defender offices. And when I was at the Philadelphia meeting of the National Association of Criminal Defense Laws, when I was in the middle of uh working to get interviews with public defender offices, there was um Gerald Lefcourt. And Gerald Lefcourt, what a wide variety of clients he's had, ranging from Abby Hoffman in the late 60s after Gerald was no longer a New York public defender. And later on, I guess in the 1990s, he was representing Leona Helmsley. Two different two very different people. There's an example right there of two very different defendants. My wife was asking me where uh uh where sister uh wait, she asked me, right, where did um it's uh it's it's skipping me. Who's who's the woman who uh who was uh the the the famous woman about homemaking stuff, uh who was over there at uh Alderson Prison when uh Carol Gilbert was there. You know I'm talking about that famous uh TV personality.

SPEAKER_01 32:34

Oh yes, the cook.

SPEAKER_02 32:35

Yeah, Martha Stewart. Yes. My wife said, Well, where did Martha Stewart do her her prison time? I said it was pretty cushy. I said it was at the same place as Sister Arthur, uh sorry, Sister Carol Platt or Platty. You know, there are no uh walls there because they figure it's uh your your sentence is too uh light, you'd be silly to to break out and uh uh uh and and you just get uh sentenced worse for for escape. So you know what a contrast in inmates. Martha Stewart there for uh Leslie Lying to uh federal law enforcement about her investment activities, and um and uh sister Carol Gilbert, who along with Artist Platy and perhaps some others had been doing that action in Colorado. So here with uh with Gerald Luffcourt, the the the wide extremes of Abby Hoffman and uh and Leona Helmsley, and uh Jerry was talking about how Abby said to him, All I want you to do, Jerry, is keep me out of jail so I can do my work. I was saying to myself, I was born too late. I would have wanted to uh represent Abby Hoffman in a Zilk. So, in the midst of that, in 1999, I went to a uh a peace action with uh my teacher Junia Suda, who I assume you've met. And uh and this woman named Audrey was there. It was across the street from the United Nations. It was the end of their, I guess, week or two-week peace walk in New York. They're praying in uh for peace across the United Nations. And Audrey tells me about how she'd been to Joan House. I had heard of Joan House. I was interested in that, and she gave me the email address for Joan House, and this woman named uh Elizabeth McAllister, who I never heard of before, who ran the listserv. And so Elizabeth McAllister, I found out, was married to Phil Berigan, and I get a call from Elizabeth uh in 1999 saying, you know, usually the plow shares and activists go to trial on their own, but this time Ramsey Clark might be available, and we're looking for local counsel. So I'm I'm on the phone, I think it was on the landline. I'm I'm acting like really nonchalant. Yeah, that sounds cool. I'm interested in reaction and excitement. I said, Oh, okay, I wasn't born too late. In fact, Ramsey said to me, you know, there's no shortage of interesting clients, activist clients, as long as you do the work for free. So I met you and Elizabeth over the jail in the Baltimore County jail, and I met uh Phil and uh Phil Berrigan and Steve Kelly in the men's unit over there. And uh what a wonderful experience. And and I learned uh so much, this was far, far, far, far from uh a standard trial or defense. It was made clear to me uh that uh the defendants might shut down the trial if they don't get to present the evidence they want. I was ready for that. Uh I knew that there might be a breakout of uh one or more of the defendants who uh would go pro se, and that's what Phil Berrigan did and Elizabeth Walls to give more uh voice to them. And then uh Ramsey ended up representing you, and and and I ended up representing uh Steve Kelly, a great uh man and Jesuit priest. And I remember the preparation for this, and I was talking with people on the phone, and I forget his name. Uh I think he was a different another Doug in DC who was involved with the depleted uranium project over in DC, and I met him at his uh apartment in Adams Morgan. I remember talking to uh uh Bishop um Bishop Gumbleton. Yes, Bishop Gumbleton, because he was your character witness, because you were the only one who was charged, uh you were the only one who was charged with assault.

SPEAKER_03 36:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:27

So that made it necessary to show that uh never would you assault anybody. And I was on the phone with Rosalie Bertell, uh a Catholic sister, a nun who also uh was an epidemiologist. I think he was even on the phone with Michiu Kaku at some point to see what insights he might have. And I didn't know at the time how famous he was as a physicist. I mean, just the whole thing. I remember my my mom's kid brother said to me, uh, what an education you're gonna get from this. And and and that was an understatement. And so by the time it all came together, and I spoke to Doug Rocky, who ended up, well, trying to testify as an expert in depleted uranium, because this was an action uh by the four of you uh against depleted uranium, hammering on on two A-10 uh Warthog warplanes to fire the depleted uranium over the Essex Air National Uh Guard base. And uh and I'm and I'm gonna this is a good time to interrupt then before I go on and on from what I learned about it. Please tell the audience about this action.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

You know, well thanks for I didn't know all that. The the back story. So that's good. That's good. I'm glad I'm glad Elizabeth called you. I I didn't know that's anyway. So, you know, the whole idea of depleted uranium it's uh it's so terrible and the the radioactive uh poisons uh that were in Iraq and other places where the depl uh depleted uranium weapons are used. It was on uh you know, you'd look in the uh newspapers, it would be maybe on the seventh page. There'd be a tiny little space about oh, and the depleted uranium weapons were used again, you know, it's like or something about the warthogs or something about the war, but it was never much in the news, and yet my friends were going over there to uh to uh visit uh Iraq and see what was going on, and they were going to the hospitals and seeing the babies that were deformed that looked like the babies that had been born in Japan and coming back and talking to us about it. And um so it seemed like something that would be important to talk about and bring up.

SPEAKER_03 38:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

And when I uh hammered the first hammers, the first my first hammer blows were on the Gatling gun. And you know, I I I was thinking of the women in Iraq and their babies when I hammered on that. It just uh was very important to make a stand with that. When when I was in prison for that action, the um when I got to the federal prison as part for part of that action, um the there was a woman there who who was a guard who had been in the military and had a lot of health issues. And the other guard said, you know, you might want to talk to her, it's uh she has health issues from the depleted uranium. Wow. So I did, and someone had sent me a book about um the relationship between the Japanese uh people who had uh birth problems, health problems, and the people in Iraq, which I gave to her.

SPEAKER_02 39:59

Great. Um you're sounding like you're transported back to that moment uh right now when you were hammering on that gadling gun.

SPEAKER_01 40:08

Yeah, yeah. It was um it was a good action, I thought.

SPEAKER_02 40:17

It certainly got the word out.

SPEAKER_01 40:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:21

Um so you were charged with assault for the silliness that uh you really didn't want to stop getting your hammering in. So even when uh you you saw the authorities coming up, you just kept hammering. So what one of the soldiers or whoever they were, MP said, Well, she she was she was raising the hammer at me. You weren't raising the hammer at him, you were raising the hammer to strike it again onto the airplane.

SPEAKER_01 40:43

He wasn't anywhere near me. It was so preposterous, it was outrageous. It was, you know, I don't think he thought that. I I think they just said that he ended up somebody tackled me, and when I fell down, they um I fell down pretty hard on the tarmac. And then they I this is what I think happened. When we were inside sitting there, they asked if anyone had been hurt. Yeah. I said instead of saying no, which I should have said, I said, I'm not sure. I fell down hard on the tarmac when I got uh tackled, and and it's cold, and I don't know if I'm hurt or not.

SPEAKER_02 41:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 41:29

So generally, when cops hurt you, they have to have a reason for it, so they charge you with assault.

SPEAKER_02 41:40

Exactly, exactly, yes, and so Annabelle Dwyer was uh you mentioned her, she was the the uh the additional lawyer who was with us. It was Ramsey, Annabelle, and I. And uh I remembered um calling up his office because I was arranging to meet with him uh prior to the trial. So the our first meeting was up at his office in uh uh New York, and it was Martin Luther King Day. And uh this really nice woman was answering the phone. Her name was Georgia. Of course, it was his wife who didn't know it at the moment at the time. And what an unusual way I thought to run a law office. I was with my law partner, Jay Marks, at the time, because the man who would usually answer the phone, if it wasn't Georgia, he wouldn't say, he wouldn't uh arrange for Ramsey to call me or set a time. Uh no, he would set a time, he'd say, Can you call Ramsey back in 10 minutes? He'll answer then. And Ramsey would always answer. So I showed up and I used to live in Manhattan. Uh Ramsey's office was in Manhattan, and uh he introduced me to Abdeen Shabarra, who I think was uh very active. I think he was uh a president or a leader of the Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, I think, at some point. And I found out that uh uh the Georgia was his uh wife, and just what a nice man Ramsey was, and and and what a gentleman he was. And we talked about the case, and one of the most important ideas he had uh was uh, and he may have just said to me over the phone, he said, Are you gonna file a motion to dismiss the sabotage count? So the counts against the four of you were sabotage, conspiracy to commit sabotage, uh destruction of property, conspiracy to commit destruction of property. And for you, uh Susan, it was assault. And this was in the uh uh circuit court of Baltimore County, uh, Maryland. And so I spoke with a different Mark whose name is very similar sounding to Mark Colville. His name was Mark Col Mark Colvin. And he was an appellate public defender lawyer over in Maryland. And I was talking about this motion I was going to file uh to dismiss the sabotage count. And uh Mark said to me, Well, let me look at this statue. And he said, Well, look, John, he said, this statute was passed in 1943. World War II was going on. That's a wartime statute. We're not at war now. Now, of course, all the plagiars activists and their supporters consider us to still be in wartime then in 1999 and 2000. He said, Why don't you give that a shot? Argue, we're not in wartime. There can't be sabotage except during wartime. I said to myself, what a novel argument. Who in the heck is going to accept that? And not only did our judge accept it, but that wasn't that judge we drew, Judge Smith, and I think he I think he later became county executive in Baltimore County. He was no soft touch. He accepted the argument. And he said to Mickey Norman, who became a circuit court judge, was a former uh cop in Baltimore County or Baltimore City, an interesting person there to say the least. Uh, we could have an entire show talking about him, but we're gonna go to the other folks here. And uh the judge asked uh the prosecutor, Mickey Norman, who was one of the senior prosecutors. I mean, Susan, this was set up to make sure that uh that this trial was done right, so to speak, by the prosecutors. They gave me open file discovery. And uh in the file was a memo that said, make sure this case doesn't get tried in district court, make sure this case gets indicted. In fact, uh when I brought that up, I think that was one of the arguments I made perhaps to dismiss the whole uh the whole trial. Uh, I think uh someone from the prosecutor's office said, Well, Mr. Cass wasn't supposed to see that. Susan, it was in the file. I went to their office. I saw uh I saw the whole thing, the the whole file. But anyway, the judge asked Mickey, he said, uh he has some sort of question related to the facts of the case. And Mickey answered it. And then the judge said, I if I'm not saying right from the bench, he said, I agree. It's a wartime statute, we're not at war. I'm dismissing that count. The same conspiracy to commit sabotage. Now get this. Two years later, representing a strip club, the three managers of co-owner of a man, two managers of a strip club, I got a law change done with uh uh the then head of the appellate division of the public defender's office, Nancy Forster, who was representing a public defender client on double jeopardy, which could have gotten the prosecutor to have declined to say to the judge, the case law allows me not to answer this and to have a whole different outcome. Here's what what happened uh the uh the Maryland Court of Appeals in the case of uh Maryland versus Taylor and Bledzo said that if a court dismisses a criminal action relying on facts outside the four corners of the charging document, get this. It's double jeopardy, and you can't then go into trial. So, what happened with my strip club case is that a strip club was raided in uh in Prince George's County, Maryland. Uh, the owner and the manager were charged with violating Prince George's County's anti-nudity law, which I thought was supposed to protect people who don't want to see this stuff rather than the people who want to see it. I was hired after uh the great judge Thurman Rhodes dismissed the case, saying the First Amendment protects this. He was actually overreaching about First Amendment uh jurisprudence in favor of the strip club. And uh the prosecution um uh appealed that. And the judge who handled appeal uh said, no, no, uh the the judge was wrong. We're gonna go to trial on this, and I and I did that appeal. So there's this whole uh there's this whole uh backstory. I mean, the further backstory is that I actually went with uh Mickey Norman to visit the physical evidence in the case, and uh he said to me, uh, well, this here hammer is a ball peen hammer. Did you know that that's what they were called when you were using them on the on the airplanes? Yeah. Okay. Well, I was such a dunce about what a ball peen hammer is. I remembered my metal shop teacher in eighth grade talking about them, uh, and the the metal on the planes was so thin that each time you hammered on there, it really created a doozy on there.

SPEAKER_03 48:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:28

Um, so then we had this trial, and um in my opening statement, I said to the jury, uh that they were there for for what they considered lawful purposes, to follow the dictates of Isaiah, hammering swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. They felt it was their their their religious duty. And um it's a good thing I got a chance to do an opening statement because we didn't I didn't get a chance to do a closing argument. Now, before we get to that part, Susan, talk about how devoted you were in this action. I take it in all your actions. While uh while Ramsey was direct examining you, or I know, I think it was when you were being cross-examined by Mickey Norman. He just kept weighing into you, weighing into you, and weighing into you about what were you doing there? And then you broke into tears and you said, I was acting against depleted uranium. What a moving time that was. That was that was the most moving part of the trial. Do you remember that?

SPEAKER_01 49:39

I don't remember that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:43

And when Bishop Gumbleton walked in, I know his I know that his collar and and and his clothes were not were not designed by Pierre Cardan. The presence that he had was such that he could be wearing a potato sack, and he came across this elegant man, not not trying to be elegant, uh, but just in in his persona, just being this totally upstanding man. And when he walked in there, all the supporters stood up for him in respect.

SPEAKER_03 50:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:14

And then we get to the shutdown of the trial. So I think you told me you liked how I how I did the uh uh uh my timing. Every time I ask uh a question of this uh depleted uranium expert who was still with the army at the time, I've tried looking up what came of him uh recently. I can't tell. Uh and the judge kept saying, sustain, sustain, sustain to the prosecutor's objections. And I said, I keep hearing sustain. So I have no further questions. And once Rocky walked out of the courtroom, you remember what you did then, right? You stood up and you said, We are, you shouted, we're being prevented from putting on a defense. And you kept talking and talking. And Steve uh Kelly gets up and he starts reading from the Bible passage of the day, which was from Jeremiah and Phil Berrigan and Elizabeth Walls turned the judge their backs to the judge, and it was like pandemonium at the bench. The judge kept uh demanding order, and uh the supporters, all the supporters in the courtroom stood up and they started. I didn't know that hymnal before, but that that hymnal from South Africa along the lines of courage, brother, you are not alone. Uh I will sing you on your journey home. Uh, I I was amazed. It was like pandemonium at the bench and and total choreography uh among the plowshares activists and the uh and the supporters in the courtroom.

SPEAKER_03 51:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:39

Now, is that the first time you closed out were involved in closing down a trial? And if so, and if it was not, is that the first time you did what you did, which I mean you were you're really sh you're really shouting out your words.

SPEAKER_01 51:52

Well, we've we've um we closed down other trials. I didn't do it in Germany, but in the states.

SPEAKER_02 52:04

And then what it came down to was I now had to do some soul searching because I knew that I had to go along with what my clients wanted, but but that was the problem. I don't think any of you would tell uh well, Steve. So Steve was my client, uh well, attorney client privilege. So how do you get along get around that? Let's just say I had to make the decision for myself whether I was gonna participate further in the trial. And um, I had no obligation to because my clients weren't requiring it. So I was in the I was in the courtroom with Ramsay and Annabelle, and um the only thing I participated with, I did get involved with the jury instructions. I felt that was important. Um and when the after the closing argument by the prosecutor and the judge asked me, okay, Mr. Cass, do you have an opening statement to make? And I leaned in the microphone because at that time all the defendants just wouldn't even come back into the courtroom. You were all in lockup uh with a speakerphone, uh a speaker, a loudspeaker telling you what was going on. And I leaned in and I said, Good morning, Steve. Uh, and I perhaps said the rest of your names. Uh I I wait, I don't make any argument. And um, so that really emphasized to me what I always have to do, Susan. I'm not there doing the cases for me. I'm doing these cases for my clients. And if my clients want to go to that level with their consciousness not to participate in the trial anymore, not to participate with sentencing, knowing that they might get a harsher sentence as a result, I have to go along with that. They get to decide. So I really agree with that, Susan.

SPEAKER_01 53:44

Well, the judge sure got his revenge.

SPEAKER_02 53:48

What's that?

SPEAKER_01 53:49

The judge sure got his revenge, didn't he?

SPEAKER_02 53:52

Yes. Yes. Susan, one of the things you said during your uh your direct examination was about working on squats. And I had this image of you being uh probably as insistent a uh a good squat renovator or whatever you call it as Jimmy Carter is was serious about uh doing habitat for the humanity, where if people came up to him to do a selfie, he'd say, if you're not working, I'm not working uh with this photo, let's just wait till later. Something tells me that you were hardcore about that work, even, and maybe about all your work.

SPEAKER_01 54:29

Well, at the squats, we we um we had learned some plumbing and electrical work um with this group skill with the group. There was a person who was uh training Latino and African American uh people to uh to he was training them in plumbing skills so that they could join the plumbers union in New York City because there were no minority people in the plumbers union. And um and I called him up and I said, I'd like to join that program. And he said, No, you're not qualified to join the program. I said, How many women are in the plumbers union? So he said, Okay, come tomorrow.

SPEAKER_03 55:16

Great.

SPEAKER_01 55:17

And so we were in this, um several of us were working uh with this uh group learning plumbing skills. We were turning a a uh church into a daycare center. But then the the job itself, not our part of it, but the whole job went bankrupt. And so uh we said to the other workers, let's uh if we need work, then let's join a let's make ourselves uh a little group and advertise and uh and get work, get job work for ourselves. So we did that. And um so we were doing work together and we were learning, I was learning a lot, and uh going out to people's homes and uh fixing their sinks or tubs or whatever needed to be.

SPEAKER_02 56:04

That's excellent.

SPEAKER_01 56:06

And then uh there were some squatters in across the street from St. John the Divine in New York. There were three buildings of squats. And before uh when the when the landlord decided he wasn't gonna use those buildings anymore, he had someone go through and destroy all the plumbing. Oh my gosh, with you know big hammers and hit it all out. So there was a lot of plumbing work that needed to be done and a lot of electrical work also. So they said to us skilled enterprise people, we'll give you a an apartment that you can live in, and why don't you come and help us with our plumbing problems because they are massive. Wow. So I thought, oh, this would be a good thing to do. So we started working on their plumbing problems and got the shit out of the basement and uh you know, make things work and and we learned how to jump the electrical so that if your electricity is off, we can turn it back on again and all those things. We it was really a lot of fun. And eventually we took some of the youth from there out with us on jobs so that they wonderful could learn to get a skill.

SPEAKER_02 57:23

What years was this?

SPEAKER_01 57:26

Uh that might have been well, it was in the 70s, I guess, sometime.

SPEAKER_02 57:31

Okay, so well, so that's when I was living in Fairfield, Connecticut, just uh just a train ride away from you, Susan. I've enjoyed this talk so much that there's so much I haven't covered, but I told you it'd be an hour. And uh the name of the show is Beat the Prosecution. So, what I ask you to do is to give any closing thoughts that you've not already given. Please give a promo to any of your uh books that you've been on. I think there was uh one of them where you had the poetry in there. Any uh charities that you recommend giving uh to, whether it's the Catholic worker movement of yours, and what are your thoughts for us criminal defense lawyers and criminal defendants about how to beat the prosecution?

SPEAKER_01 58:15

Well, what what I think, I mean, we're facing a lot of problems right now. We're facing the climate crisis, um, and we all know that the military is one of the biggest polluters, but they don't have to even count the greenhouse gases that they produce. Um so we're on the edge of we're on the edge of uh I don't know, human extinction. We don't know exactly what's happening, but but we're not moving in a good way as far as the climate, we're not moving in a good way as far as nuclear weapons go. And um and then there's all these other problems that we're facing in this country around scapegoating immigrants and things like that. So I I always think it's good for all of us, myself including, to uh always take a move out of our country our comfort zone and work in community with other people to act as brothers and sisters towards each other.

SPEAKER_02 59:17

Yes. And do you have any thoughts about how we criminal defense lawyers and criminal defense can uh beat the prosecution?

SPEAKER_01 59:27

Well you know, that's a funny thing. I was thinking of your words of beat the prosecution. Um when when um this lawyer that came forward to help me, uh Milan Martin, at the very first trial, I had two charges against me for um going onto the base and resisting, you know, speaking out against the weapons. And he said, you know, I looked at they didn't take your passport information, they don't have a picture, they don't have any information about you. So he said, I could I could get these charges dismissed right now. And I said, I've come all the way to this trial and I've waited for how many years? Four years to get in front of a judge to give the judge a chance to do the right thing. And I want to I want to talk about why I was there and I want the judge to make the right decision. So so I don't know, is uh for me beating the prosecution may mean. I don't know uh if that's my that's not my first goal. I mean it is it's a goal in a way because I think the judges should join us in reason and obeying the law. That's all okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:55

So I think that you have helped. Uh here's here's the message. I think I at least one message you got earlier uh teleping on this. There's actually a few of them. One is persuading people by engaging them.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:09

And the way you talked about how uh those people at Lockheed Martin, they weren't trying to uh assault you or pull the hammer away from you. You had really engaged them. You had really you had really gotten um connected with them. Uh it reminds me of what uh Ardit Platy uh uh once uh said. I think it was directly to me or to a group of people. Um, I think it was to me, she said that uh it was perhaps when she went back to where she and uh sister Carol were arrested. Where was that? I think in Colorado, and uh she reconnected with one of the law enforcement officers. It was either there or else at the Pentagon, where she said where you know there would be actions there at least twice a year, right? Uh leading up to Easter uh uh and and maybe another time of year. It was there at the Pentagon, and she said to me, You know, John, I think I really got through to that law enforcement officer this time, military police officer or whatever. I really think I touched his heart. And really a big part of this uh persuasion, I think, Susan, is uh planting the seeds and watering the seeds and not having anger towards our opponents, not having anger towards anyone, because when we don't have that anger, that anger is debilitating, and the non-anger can be so persuasive when coupled with everything else with the persuasion. And it's amazing that you can do this and the other plowshares activists, because uh your liberty is on the line, and you're often being held in prison and jail during this time, and you're just you're just not showing the anger, are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:54

Try not to. It's a struggle, you know. Violence is a struggle. Wait, it's never it's a journey.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:05

Susan, do you have any um recommended uh organizations or causes to give money to uh for our listeners? For instance, whether it's your your Catholic worker house or any other organization.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:22

Well, Catholic worker houses, they're all they're all over the world and they're all next to you, wherever your community is, and they can all use donations.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:33

I recommend that everybody. I've gone several times to the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House on First Fridays over in DC. That's a real uh great experience just to go there. And uh while they're helping people there who are homeless and otherwise in need, I remember how one of the residents there said, I don't know if it's the way with all of them, he said uh their allowance was was so small that if if he went to a movie in one month, that pretty much used up, I think, as much as a one-tenth to one-fourth of the allowance. So I do recommend uh anybody to uh look up the Catholic Worker Movement and give a donation to a Catholic worker organization or house. Susan, thank you so much for joining. We haven't talked in a long while. It's so good to see you out of prison. Unless you have any other thoughts, I'm gonna close now. This has been John Katza, Beat the Prosecution. It has been my utter, total, and sheer delight to be here with Susan Crane. I am a criminal defense and DUI defense law in Northern Virginia. This is Beat the Prosecution. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:42

Thank you for listening to this week's episode from Beat the Prosecution. This is a regular podcast giving people a leg up against police investigations and prosecutions. Nothing discussed on our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or to individuals who have paid for a consultation. We welcome you contacting us via email at info at beatheprosecution.com by calling our office at 703 383 1100 or texting us at 571 406 7268.