The Pitstop Ploughshares were a group of five members of the Catholic Worker Movement who made their way into Shannon Airport in Ireland and damaged a United States Navy C-40 transport aircraft in the early hours of 3 February 2003. [1] Their actions were inspired by the vision of Isaiah 2:4 to "beat swords into ploughshares". [2]
The five members were Deirdre Clancy, Nuin Dunlop, Karen Fallon, Ciaron O'Reilly and Damien Moran. [3]
The Pitstop Ploughshares group spent between four and eleven weeks in Limerick Prison. They went to trial in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in March and October 2005 on two counts of criminal damage, €100 and US$2.5 million. Penalties, if convicted, would have been a maximum of ten years imprisonment. [3]
Their March 2005 trial collapsed on the sixth day when Judge O'Donnell called a mistrial, [4] having made biased comments about a defence witness.[ citation needed ] Media were instructed not to report on the reasons for the mistrial until legal proceedings were completed.[ citation needed ]
The October 2005 re-trial collapsed on the tenth day, after Judge Donagh MacDonagh agreed with defence counsel that his attendance at the United States presidential inauguration in 2001 of George W. Bush (along with other meetings he had with Bush when he was Governor of Texas) were grounds for his removal from the case, in that his role was tainted with a "perception of bias". [5]
The third trial of the Pitstop Ploughshares trial started on 10 July 2006 and resulted in a unanimous not guilty verdict on both charges of criminal damage (to the aircraft and the door of the hangar) after twelve days of testimony and legal argument. Judge Miriam Reynolds had agreed with the defence on day nine of the proceedings, after extensive submissions and legal argument, on the applicability of the statutory lawful excuse defence.
After four-and-a-half hours of deliberation, the Dublin jury of seven women and five men returned and gave their decision that all the accused should be acquitted, as they were acting to save lives and property in Iraq and Ireland, and that their disarmament action was reasonable, taking into consideration all the circumstances. [6] [7]
Over 100 international and numerous Irish anti-war activists converged in Dublin for all three trials. Public meetings took place around the trials, with well-known speakers such as Denis Halliday and Kathy Kelly.[ citation needed ]
In jurisprudence, double jeopardy is a procedural defence that prevents an accused person from being tried again on the same charges following an acquittal or conviction and in rare cases prosecutorial and/or judge misconduct in the same jurisdiction. Double jeopardy is a common concept in criminal law. In civil law, a similar concept is that of res judicata. Variation in common law countries is the peremptory plea, which may take the specific forms of autrefois acquit or autrefois convict. These doctrines appear to have originated in ancient Roman law, in the broader principle non bis in idem.
Jury nullification (US/UK), jury equity (UK), or a perverse verdict (UK) occurs when the jury in a criminal trial gives a not guilty verdict despite a defendant having clearly broken the law. The jury's reasons may include the belief that the law itself is unjust, that the prosecutor has misapplied the law in the defendant's case, that the punishment for breaking the law is too harsh, or general frustrations with the criminal justice system. Some juries have also refused to convict due to their own prejudices in favor of the defendant. Such verdicts are possible because a jury has an absolute right to return any verdict it chooses.
Trident Ploughshares is an activist anti-nuclear weapons group, founded in 1998 with the aim of "beating swords into ploughshares". This is specifically by attempting to disarm the UK Trident nuclear weapons system, in a non-violent manner. The original group consisted of six core activists, including Angie Zelter, founder of the non-violent Snowball Campaign.
Jury tampering is the crime of unduly attempting to influence the composition and/or decisions of a jury during the course of a trial. The means by which this crime could be perpetrated can include attempting to discredit potential jurors to ensure they will not be selected for duty. Once selected, jurors could be bribed or intimidated to act in a certain manner on duty. It could also involve making unauthorized contact with them for the purpose of introducing prohibited outside information and then arguing for a mistrial. In the United States, people have also been charged with jury tampering for handing out pamphlets and flyers indicating that jurors have certain rights and obligations, including an obligation to vote their conscience notwithstanding the instructions they are given by the judge.
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In law, a trial is a coming together of parties to a dispute, to present information in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court. The tribunal, which may occur before a judge, jury, or other designated trier of fact, aims to achieve a resolution to their dispute.
Ciaron O'Reilly is an Australian anti-war campaigner, peace protester, social justice campaigner and Catholic Worker, having been "engaged in ... protests, acts of civil disobedience and trials in England, Ireland, and his native Australia." He has also become one of the most visible and active practical and theoretical exponents of the ideas of Christian anarchism, arguing that this "'is not an attempt to synthesise two systems of thought' that are hopelessly incompatible, but rather 'a realisation that the premise of anarchism is inherent in Christianity and the message of the Gospels.'"
Clare Grady is an American peace activist and a member of the Catholic Worker and the Plowshares movements. She advocated against use of cruise missiles for first-strike capability in the 1983 Griffiss Plowshares action. In the process of the protest, military equipment was damaged and splattered with blood. In 2003, she and three others made up The Saint Patrick's Day Four, who conducted a protest action at a military recruiting center in Lansing, New York against the impending Iraq War. She participated in the Kings Bay Plowshares action on April 4, 2018, which resulted in a conviction and sentence of one year and a day.
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Goretti Horgan is an Irish socialist activist and a lecturer in social policy at the Ulster University in Northern Ireland.
Colm Murphy is an Irish republican who was the first person to be convicted in connection with the Omagh bombing, but whose conviction was overturned on appeal. While awaiting a retrial on criminal charges, Murphy was found liable for the bombing in a civil trial, along with Michael McKevitt, Liam Campbell and Seamus Daly. He was subsequently cleared of criminal charges in February 2010.
R v Saibene and others was an English trial of seven of the "Smash EDO" campaign. On 16–17 January 2009 the activists broke into the armaments factory-office in Moulsecoomb and damaged equipment worth around £200,000. They were cleared by the jury of conspiring to cause and causing criminal damage. The jury accepted their defence that they were acting with lawful excuse by aiming to prevent Israeli war crimes during the 2009 Gaza War.
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Sometimes you just have to do the right thing.