Second Subpoena Issued for Iowa Grand Jury

Submitted by haloka on Tue, 11/10/2009 Twin Cities Indymedia

Almost a month after Twin Cities activist Carrie Feldman was subpoenaed to an Iowa grand jury, another activist was served a subpoena on the same street corner at the same time and same day of the week. Late Monday afternoon, Scott DeMuth's car was surrounded by a gaggle of local and federal unmarked vehicles on 31st Street near Powderhorn Park. Several men got out, nervously walked to the car, and handed DeMuth the subpoena requesting his fingerprints.

Both activists have been asked to appear next Tuesday before the Davenport, Iowa grand jury that appears to be investigating a 2004 Animal Liberation Front action targeting vivisection at the University of Iowa. At the time, Feldman was a 15-year-old high school sophomore in Minneapolis.

Related: Subpoena PDF | Statement from DeMuth/Support Info | Thursday: Grand-Jury Send-off Potluck and Hip-hop Show @ Seward Cafe | 10-14: Local Activist Subpoenaed to Grand Jury in Iowa | Solidarity Rally Also: Bogus Subpoena Against US Indymedia

Both she and DeMuth have previously faced harassment due to their activism around the RNC, prisoner support, decolonization and other issues, and it appears the subpoenas are an attempt to take advantage of a dead-end investigation by extending that harassment and repression.

Solidarity rallies have been called for the Tuesday of the Grand Jury both in Davenport and at the Federal Courthouse in Minneapolis. On that day, Feldman will be going before the grand jury for the second time.

If the prosecution fails to be pleased, it's likely they will seek immunity for the witnesses in an attempt to compel testimony. Upon further refusal to cooperate with the fishing expedition, a resister could be jailed for the length of the grand jury, up to 12 months.

"Grand juries have been used as an integral tactic in the Green Scare, which is the ongoing repression of both legal and illegal activities of the environmentalist and animal rights/animal liberation movements," wrote DeMuth in a statement about his subpoena. Given changing attitudes about animal rights and the FBI and animal research industry's frustration at the unsolved 2004 action, the subpoenas are less than surprising.

Last week, the Minneapolis Star Tribune published an article describing the animal research industry's attempt to salvage their declining public image through a national advertising campaign, including 15 billboards in the Twin Cities. A national poll cited in the article found that only 52% of Americans currently support animal research, down 18% from nine years ago.

On Monday, the Star Tribune followed up by reporting that a professor implicated in animal torture at the University of Minnesota is receiving security at his home when his name showed up on an anti-torture website.

Troublesome, too, for the FBI, must be the breaking of the grand jury's secrecy, and what has so far been a largely successful culture of noncooperation with questionable federal tactics in the midwest. In a separate grand jury case that hit both alternative and corporate media outlets Tuesday, a subpoena seeking the IP addresses of visitors to Indymedia.US (records which aren't even kept by Indymedia) was de-fanged by its exposure and noncooperation. That grand jury seems to have been investigating environmental activists opposing the construction of I-69 in Indiana.

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