Nuns Conviction Upheld
by Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals

The decision of the 10 th Circuit Court of Appeals came down tonight, St. Patrick's Day: a unanimous decision upholding the conviction and sentencing of The Sacred Earth and Space Plowshares: Sisters Ardeth Platte, Carol Gilbert , and Jackie Hudson .

'The Sisters acted appropriately and legally in refusing to sleepwalk to Armageddon,' said Peter Weiss of the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

There are injustices and there are injustices. This decision stands with the worst of them. Sisters Ardeth, Carol and Jackie were charged of sabotage and felony destruction of a weapon of mass destruction at the time that this nation was busily justifying its pursuit of a vicious and murderous war against the people of Iraq--a war with no limits, a war that defies every 'law of war,' a war in which the U.S. of A is revealed as having no shred of decency. The nuns were tried as that brutal war advanced--'shock and awe' for the world. They were convicted by a jury fed by 'fox-news.' And now their illegal and immoral conviction has been upheld by Bush appointed judges of the 10 th Circuit Court of Appeals. The decision of the judges exposes the U.S. courts and the legal system as existing to serve and justify the crimes of government. This ruling is in harmony with the Gonzales Injustice Department.

Expected? Unexpected? How much do we hope in the courts? We might not have hoped at all except that during oral argument, judges questioned the U.S. Government Attorney about the inappropriateness of his charges. But they have ladders to climb that get pulled out from under them when one writes decisions that are unpopular in the hall of mirrors. In response to an inquiry from a reporter earlier today, Bill Sulzman, long time activist and part of the backbone of the nuns' support, said: 'This opinion has the aroma of being heavily politically seasoned.'

The message is clear. There can be no mistaking it. It is dangerous to be a peacemaker in the United States of America in these times. And the nuns are experiencing that every day--as are all of us who love them.

Remember that the Sisters merely showed, with good-faith, how non-violent nuclear disarmament can successfully and legally occur. They non-violently and symbolically identified a grotesque nuclear weapon (20 times the Hiroshima bomb). They modeled a method for non-violent disarmament one weapon at a time-- in honest service to this country and the world. They knew that it was their right, duty and privilege to point out the hideous disasters and high crimes inherent in the US's high-alert threat to use nuclear weapons in Colorado or anywhere else.

In the words of the nuns themselves:

We acted consciously non-violently and symbolically to uphold the laws of war, that absolutely prohibit any threat or use of a weapon of mass extermination such as the Minuteman III. We did exactly what the President was demanding of all other countries to show good-faith progress toward our common legal and moral obligation for non-violent nuclear disarmament. Our non-violent and symbolic acts to expose and inspect a weapon of mass extermination on high-alert merely showed legal ways to achieve non-violent nuclear disarmament. We acted as citizens to stand up on the side of necessary universal adherence to the laws of war and for essential non-violent nuclear disarmament, a side the US itself purports to be on.