Two bits of American news

ELP Information Bulletin (6th September 2007)

Dear friends

ELP has two bits of American news for you.

    1) Eric McDavid is being denied a vegan diet
    2) Article about Rod Coronado's forthcoming trial

1) ELP received the following e-mail from
sacprisonersupport@riseup.net who are running Eric McDavid's support
campaign

Hello everyone,

Please read on for the latest on Eric and his upcoming trial...

Eric denied vegan food....again
Eric is still being denied a healthy diet.  As of Friday night, the jail
stopped bringing Eric breakfast and dinner trays that he could eat.  The
only vegan food the jail was bringing Eric was a bagged lunch with a
peanut butter sandwich and fruit.  Now, they have stopped providing him
ANY vegan meals - not even the bagged lunch.  This means that the only
food available to Eric is what he is able to order from commissary and the
food on his trays that happens to be vegan (usually a little fruit and
bread each day).    Obviously, this is not enough to meet his body's
needs.  No one can be healthy on just bread and fruit, there are few vegan
options from the commissary, and he only has access to commissary once a
week. Eric has exhausted all official channels for having his meals
restored.  It is difficult to believe the timing of this dramatic and
abrupt change in his diet is merely a coincidence. With less than a week
to trial, Eric is now struggling to take care of his physical health as
well as maintaining his emotional and mental health.  With all of Eric's
options for redress being exhausted, we need your help!  Please call the
Sacramento County Jail and request that they provide Eric with complete
vegan meals immediately. The have been giving him vegan food for the last
15 months and they can do it again. Please call the jail at:  916.874.6752

Fundraising
The last of the matching funds have been met!  This means that we have
surpassed our goal of $15,000.  Our biggest thanks to all of you who
helped make this possible.  All of the money raised will go directly to
Eric's legal defense.  We still do not have a final figure from Eric's
lawyer about how much money we will actually need to get all the way
through trial - the $15,000 was an estimate that he gave us many months
ago.  While we hope this will be enough to pay for all of the legal fees,
we won't be certain for another couple of weeks.  Please stay tuned and be
ready - we might need your help again in the future!


In Limine Hearing
On Friday, Eric will have his final hearing before trial begins on Monday.
This hearing is very important, as the government has filed two motions
that seek to deny Eric the ability to choose his own defense strategy.
The first motion is a motion to preclude the use of the entrapment
defense.  The second motion is to preclude the defense from "raising
previously decided legal issues" - which would include all of the issues
raised in virtually all of the pre-trial defense motions that Eric's
lawyer filed in December/January.  We are working on posting the
government's In Limine motions on Eric's website.


Trial in less than a week!
Eric's trial begins on Monday, September 10.  The first day will be jury
selection, with opening arguments probably beginning on September 11.  We
have been told that court will only be in session Monday, Tuesday, and
Wednesday of each week.  This means that we will (probably) be in court
September 10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, etc.  Originally the government was
speculating that trial would last 10-14 days - now they are only
projecting 6.  This means that we could possibly be done with closing
arguments after the second week, although that seems somewhat unlikely.
It seems more likely that trial will run into the third week - September
24, 25, and 26.  However,  nothing is certain.  For those of you who are
planning on attending trial, please keep in mind that Eric's preference is
for people to be there, if possible, at the end of trial.  We realize
this is complicated by the fact that we don't actually know WHEN that
might be...  We'll keep everyone updated as trial progresses and we should
have a better sense of the timeline as things move along.  And please
remember, if you are planning on attending trial make sure that you are
dressed appropriately for court.

List Volume
Thanks to all of you who have stuck with us for the almost 20 months of
this ordeal.  Up until now, the volume on this list has been very low, but
as trial approaches we will continue sending out more frequent updates.
Once trial arrives we will be trying to send updates every day about the
court proceedings.  If this is NOT something you are interested in, please
let us know before Monday so we can remove you from the list.  If you know
others who ARE interested in receiving this information, but are not on
the list, please have them email us and we will add them.  We will also be
posting our updates on various Indymedia sites, as well as on Eric's
website at www.supporteric.org

After almost 20 months in Total Separation, Eric is very ready for his
trial to get started.  His strong heart and good spirits have constantly
amazed us - he often seems to handle things better than those of us who
are not locked behind steel doors and concrete walls.  And while he is
aware that this will not be an easy fight, he remains steadfast and secure
in his decision to move forward with integrity and to fight these
outrageous charges against him.  Thank you all for standing with him, for
supporting him, for sharing your love, your joy, and your outrage at
injustices suffered.

Yours,
SPS


2) The following article may be of interest to people...

Activist Goes to Trial for Giving Explosives Instruction

Rod Coronado, a lifelong animal rights activist and convicted
arsonist, goes to trial next week for allegedly telling a crowd
something they could find on Google.

By WILL CARLESS Voice Staff Writer

Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2007 | Animal rights activist Rod Coronado spent
most of the late 1990s in federal prison, serving a 57-month sentence
for burning down a fur farm laboratory on the campus of Michigan
State University.

In 2003, four years after his release from prison, Coronado made a
controversial speech to a group of activists in San Diego. After the
speech, according to court documents, a member of the audience asked
Coronado how he built the incendiary device he used to destroy the
fur farm in Michigan.

The answer Coronado gave could be about to send him back to federal
prison. If federal prosecutors have their way, Coronado could end up
spending more time in prison for talking about the Michigan State
arson than he did for committing the arson itself.

In his answer, Coronado described how he built the Molotov
cocktail-type device he used for the Michigan arson. Almost three
years after he made the speech, he was charged under a seldom-used
federal statute that prohibits individuals from teaching or
demonstrating the making or use of an explosive device with the
intent that passing on the information will lead to further crimes.

The case, which comes to trial in federal court in San Diego next
week, is the latest phase of a three-year effort by federal
prosecutors and investigators to bring charges in relation to a
massive arson in University City that caused $50 million of damage
and occurred the same day as Coronado’s speech.

A banner found at the scene of the arson read "If you build it, we
will burn it -- The ELFs are mad." ELF is an acronym for the Earth
Liberation Front, an extremist environmental group; Coronado was once
the group's spokesman.

In 2005, two local animal rights activists, Danae Kelley and David
Agranoff, were jailed for several months for refusing to testify
before a federal grand jury investigating the arson. Those activists
were later freed and the grand jury has yet to bring any charges.

Coronado, who lives in Tucson, was in San Diego for a pre-trial
hearing Friday. He said the charges that have been brought against
him are a last-gasp effort by the government to justify several years
of fruitless investigation of the arson.

"In lieu of capturing the responsible parties for the University City
arson, the government is trying to silence someone who has given some
breath to a movement they want to hurt," Coronado said outside the
court.

Federal prosecutors would not comment on the ongoing case.

The government’s case will essentially hinge on Coronado’s intent
when he made the speech. Undercover investigators were at the speech
and recorded it, but according to court documents, the investigator’s
recorder cut out before the question and answer section of the
lecture began. Therefore, exactly what was said about the Michigan
State arson, and how Coronado said it, is in dispute.

Under a strict reading of the statute Coronado has been charged
under, prosecutors must prove that when Coronado described how he
made the incendiary device he intended his audience to go out and use
that information to commit crime, said Gerald Singleton, one of
Coronado’s attorneys.

But Singleton said he will ask the judge to instruct the jury to take
a more narrow approach to the statute in Coronado’s case.

That approach is based on a 1969 Supreme Court decision, Brandenburg v. Ohio.

In Brandenburg, the court ruled that the government could only punish
inflammatory speech if it was "directed to inciting and likely to
incite imminent lawless action." If the judge instructs the jury to
follow this case, Singleton said, the jury would have to agree that
Coronado intended to incite immediate lawless action from the group
that gathered to hear him speak that night in Hillcrest.

Coronado said that group consisted mainly of middle-aged animal
rights activists and young punk rockers -- hardly the sort of crowd
to go out and immediately start burning things down, he said.

Singleton said the narrower interpretation of the statute makes sense
considering the fact that the information his client passed on to the
crowd can be found easily and quickly online. A Google search for
"How to make a Molotov cocktail" garnered 6,880 results in 0.37
seconds, including a page from the online encyclopedia Wikipedia that
includes diagrams showing the making of a Molotov cocktail.

Singleton will have some help in winning over the judge and jury in
the shape of J. Tony Serra, a battle-hardened veteran of civil rights
law who once defended members of the Black Panthers.

Serra will be examining some of the witnesses and will be making the
closing statement in Coronado’s trial, Singleton said.

The trial begins Sept. 10.

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2007/09/04/news/01coronado090407.txt&itemid=200709040716520.528885

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Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network
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www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk