The Jury's Message
(Revised 6/19/02; broken link fixed
8/7/02, minor edits 12/1/04)
Analysis of the $4.4 Million Verdict for Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney
in the Earth First! vs. FBI Case
On June 11, 2002 a
federal jury returned a stunning verdict in favor of Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney
in their landmark civil rights lawsuit against
four FBI agents and three Oakland Police officers.
The jury clearly found that six of the seven FBI and OPD
defendants framed Judi and
Darryl in an effort to crush Earth First! and chill participation in Redwood
Summer. That was evident in the fact that 80% of the $4.4 million total
damage award was for violation of their First Amendment rights to speak out and
organize politically in defense of the forests.
"The jury exonerated
us," said Darryl Cherney. "They found the FBI to be the ones in
violation of the law. The
American public needs to understand that the FBI can't be trusted. Ten jurors got a good, hard look at the FBI and they didn't like
what they saw."
"The outcome was even more significant because we won
this case with our attorneys' hands tied behind their backs and the jury
blindfolded by the judge's ruling that we couldn't talk about the FBI's long,
documented history of targeting dissenting political groups for disruption and
neutralization," added Cherney.
"It's really beyond our wildest
dreams," said Darlene Comingore, Judi Bari's friend and executor of her
estate who took her place as co-plaintiff in this suit. "We hope the
FBI and Oakland and all the police forces out there that think they can violate
people's rights and get away with it are listening because the people of the
state of California and Oakland today said, 'No, you can't. You can't get away
with it.' "
Lead attorney Dennis Cunningham said
the message he hopes the verdict sends is that: "Ashcroft is doing
precisely the wrong thing to abandon the (Levi) guidelines and let the FBI go
after dissent with a free hand. It's clear that their intention is not about
fighting terrorism, it's about suppressing dissent. That's what the FBI has
always been about. Hopefully it will make Congress think twice about giving them
a free hand."
"The
jury is the conscience of the community," said attorney J. Tony
Serra, who played a prominent role in the trial. "In this case they
took the high road. They valued constitutional rights above the fear factor
since September 11. This was a case of FBI falsity, perjury, and cover-up,
and that can not be tolerated. The jury showed the rest of America that even
in the face of brutal terrorism we cannot discard the very civil liberties
that make the country great. This verdict encourages people who have been
wronged to step forward and not be fearful."
"This
case needs to be part of the context in the discussion about FBI
powers," agreed Alicia Littletree, paralegal on the legal team.
"It shows that the FBI has been looking at activists and tampering with
their protected activities. They've been doing it for decades, and we've got
to put a stop to it. Don't give the FBI more power to spy on people, because
instead of fighting terrorism they go after activists."
Attorney Bob
Bloom said he understood that this was only the third jury trial in a
civil rights case against the FBI, and the damages awarded were the highest
ever. In the 1981 Hobson case, a jury awarded $711,000 in a civil rights
case for harassment of activists by the FBI and Washington, DC police. The
family of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, killed by Chicago Police during
an FBI-instigated raid in 1969, ultimately received a $1.85 million
settlement when the case was appealed after the jury hung and the judge
entered a directed verdict for defendants. Dennis Cunningham was the
attorney for the Hampton family in that case. The FBI paid $3.1 million to
settle a suit by the family of Vicky Weaver, who was shot by an FBI sniper
at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
Judge
Claudia Wilken took the extraordinary step of ordering jurors not to talk
about the case or their deliberations to anyone but immediate family. But at
least one juror apparently violated the gag order by talking to reporter
Mike Geniella of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat on condition of anonymity,
according to a story
published on June 14.
The
case was not even close. "There was always a majority willing to return
verdicts in favor of the plaintiffs. There was never a chance that these
officers were going to be cleared," the juror told Geniella.
"There were too many lies and manipulation of the evidence. Law
enforcement isn't supposed to do that. They should rely on the truth to make
a case."
The verdict was the subject of
editorials in the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury-News and the
Santa Rosa Press Democrat.
The San
Francisco
Chronicle editorial
said that the verdict "reminds law enforcement advocates that Americans
are not panicked by the threat of terrorism into abandoning their civil
rights. ... The overzealous pursuit of (Bari and Cherney) was unacceptable
-- and unconstitutional -- regardless of what one thinks of the activists'
politics." (6/13/02)
The San
Jose Mercury-News
editorial said the lesson in the Earth First! verdict was that
"with broader power comes the possibility of abuse by government
agencies. ... The real lesson here
isn't just that environmentalists aren't terrorists; it's that people who
challenge the status quo are the most likely to see their civil rights
threatened. In a democracy, those people are important even when they're
making us mighty uncomfortable. ... The next gadflies on the radar screen
probably won't be white environmentalists singing folk songs. They may be
people of color with thick accents. But Tuesday's verdict will protect their
civil rights equally well, and for equally good reasons." (6/13/02)
The Santa
Rosa Press
Democrat editorial said: "A federal jury on Tuesday delivered a
stunning rebuke of the FBI and the Oakland police, declaring that the police
agencies violated the civil rights of North Coast timber activists Judi Bari
and Darryl Cherney. ... There is only one certain conclusion. After hearing
the evidence and deliberating for 18 (sic) days, a jury of 10 people decided
that every American, regardless of his or her political views, is promised
the full protection of the Constitution. (6/12/02)
Columnist Rob Morse (rmorse@sfchronicle.com)
of the Chronicle worked the verdict into his June
14 column. In a piece satirizing the FBI's current recruitment ads,
Morse wrote that he wanted to be "a columnist for the FBI," playing
on the McCarthy-era movie title "I Was a Communist for the FBI." Morse
wrote, "I want to learn how to destroy people's careers and
reputations, the way the FBI did with Earth First's Judi Bari and former UC
President Clark Kerr, as shown in Seth Rosenfeld's eye-opening piece in last
Sunday's Chronicle."
The Institute
for Public Accuracy issued a June 12 press
release quoting two experts on the FBI's past crimes against the rights
of political activists, including the infamous COINTELPRO campaigns to
covertly "neutralize" dissidents.
Nkechi
Taifa (ntaifa@law.howard.edu, www.law.howard.edu/faculty/pages/ntaifa)
is director of the Equal Justice Program at
Howard University School of Law. She said in a press release from the
Institute for Public Accuracy: "This jury verdict is yet another
indication of what is in store should Ashcroft's plans to loosen the
longstanding Levi guidelines become a reality. The guidelines were
implemented to curb FBI abuses uncovered during the Senate investigations of
the mid-'70s. The 1990 Bari bomb fiasco occurred despite the existence of
these clear guidelines prohibiting such outrageous activity by the FBI. What
will be the limits of governmental abuse if there are no guidelines in
place?"
Paul Wolf (paulwolf@derechos.org, www.cointel.org)
was principal author of the report "COINTELPRO The Untold American
Story." Wolf said of the Bari case, "Despite its carefully
contrived image as the nation's premier crime-fighting agency, the FBI has
always functioned primarily as America's political police. This role has
included not only the collection of intelligence on the activities of
political dissidents and groups, but also counterintelligence operations to
thwart those activities.... There is no better example than the Judi Bari
case to show that the FBI kept on well into the 1990s using covert action
tactics against political movements and activists which they perceived as
threats to the established order.... In spite of knowing full well from
their own expert's testimony that Bari and Cherney were innocent victims,
the FBI and Oakland police continued to lie to the media ... saying they had
plenty of evidence they were the bombers."
The
Judi
Bari Web Site