[News] Grand Jury resister update

[News at freedomarchives.org]

Update on Allison Watson

The perjury charges against me have been dismissed.

I would like to thank all those people who have supported me
in my legal battles with the Federal Prosecutor’s office in
Seattle. Although I was never myself a target for investigation for any 
crime, I was being prosecuted for exercising my rights under the 1st 
Amendment of freedom of association. You see, people that I know were 
targets of an investigation where there was so little evidence that the 
prosecutors had not laid any charges but were fishing for information.

I don’t trust my government and there is valid historical
reason for not trusting my government. I remember the lessons
of the Hollywood black lists and how careers and lives were
destroyed because people were intimidated into giving
information on their friends and family. Today answering that
someone is a vegan, a member of an animal rights or
environmental organization means that you could be providing
information that would cause problems for other people.
Questions like; are you now or ever been a member of an animal
rights organization or an environmental group. The House of
UnAmerican Activities demonstrated very vividly just how
un-American such questioning is.

I would never and will never answer any question of any
Grand Jury without my constitutional right of legal representation, a right 
that was denied to me by the federal prosecutors in Seattle. This is not 
about cooperation in the interest of society. This is about cooperating 
with a system that is working overtime to deprive all Americans of the rights
guaranteed to us by that most noble of proclamations – the
Constitution of the United States of America. I would rather
die or be imprisoned than to diminish the rights established
in that document and defended by brave patriots for over two
hundred years.

The bottom line is this; the government of the United States
of America has no right to intimidate, harass, persecute and
harangue its citizens to provide information that will lead to
the deprivation of rights to other citizens or oneself for
political reasons. The fact is that the present administration
of the United States has declared war on both the environmental and animal 
rights movements. There is a political and career enhancing motivation by 
federal prosecutors to bring animal rights and environmental activists to 
trial. The administration wants heads and the federal prosecutors are 
striving to collect those heads.

For more than two years, the U.S. Department of Justice has
been harassing me. They did not bother to explain their reasons to me. Big 
Brother apparently does not need reasons. I was first called in to be 
finger-printed. I was not arrested but subpoenaed. I was brought in again 
to give hand-writing samples. I was brought in again to give fingerprints a 
second time. I was called into the Grand Jury only to be told to come back 
again at another time. Two years of being subpoenaed and called in and 
appointments cancelled, and then subpoenaed again, without a reason given. 
The idea of course is to make someone believe he or she is being 
investigated for a crime without telling them that they are or are not, 
without being specific. Always vague, always demanding, and always 
intimidating.

When I was compelled to appear before the grand jury, I was told that I 
would have no right to a lawyer to counsel me during questioning. I pleaded 
the Fifth Amendment. In response I was ordered before a Judge who told me I 
could not invoke the Fifth Amendment, after all, my name is not Oliver 
North. I was than brought before the Grand Jury where I promptly pleaded 
the First Amendment specifically concerned with the clause; nor shall be 
compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be 
deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. Being 
denied counsel is a denial of due process. I pleaded the 1st amendment 
citing that the government had no right to question me about my freedom of 
association with other persons. Again the Judge ordered me to answer the 
questions of the Grand Jury and stated that the 1st Amendment was not valid 
to protect me against questions aimed at chilling my right to be an 
activist. I answered questions, but, as the transcript of my
hearing reveals, the prosecutors bullied, intimidated and tricked me in a 
way that they believed they could bring perjury charges against 
me.  Ultimately, the government dropped the charges because we intended to 
prove how unfairly they treated me. Also, critical evidence to demonstrate 
the unfairness of the process and the prosecutors’ questioning of me had 
been destroyed.

According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer:

The government dropped the perjury charge Thursday after failing to produce 
transcripts of conversations within the Grand Jury room before and after 
Watson testified.

“It happened by accident – totally inadvertent.” Said Assistant U.S. 
Attorney Mark Bartlett who explained that the documents were thrown out as 
the office was getting ready to move to the new federal courthouse.

Bartlett said that an employee threw out roughly ten years of paper tapes 
containing transcripts of grand jury proceedings in which witnesses were 
not present in the belief that there were electronic discs containing the 
same information.

The Post Intelligencer also reported:

Seattle attorney Angelo Calfo sought to defend his client by showing that 
the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Friedman, had constructed a 
“perjury trap,” by tricking her into committing perjury. To further his 
argument, Calfo successfully sought an order from U.S. District Judge 
Marsha Pechman requiring the U.S. Attorney’s office to produce transcripts
of conversations in the grand-jury chambers made before and after Watson 
testified.

This could not be done because the transcripts had been destroyed.

Thursday, prosecutors dropped the perjury charges against Watson, which if 
she had been found guilty, could have brought her five years in prison and 
a $250,000 fine.

This was in fact a precedent set because the Judge ordered the Federal 
Prosecutor’s office to provide depositions from the principles in 
attendance at the Grand Jury. The Federal Attorney’s office chose not to 
provide these depositions and instead dismissed the charges.

The Post Intelligencer went on to report:

Calfo said Watson was ordered back before the Grand Jury last Thursday, but 
refused to answer questions.

Said Calfo: “Her position was: “I was called before the Grand Jury and 
falsely accused of perjury in a situation where I felt I was tricked. I 
don’t feel it’s fair to require me to continue to cooperate under these 
circumstances.”

I was then charged with contempt and plead guilty to the charge on the 
understanding that it would be a misdemeanor conviction and not a felony 
and I will not have a probationary period. I could go to jail for a maximum 
of 6 months. I was ordered to appear for sentencing on November 17, 2004.

Having failed to prosecute me for perjury and having failed to
intimidate me into cooperation with their Grand Jury, the Federal 
Prosecutor’s office turned their attention on animal right activist and my 
best friend Gina Lynn. Gina Lynn is a very outspoken animal rights activist 
but she is not a criminal.

Thus the witch hunt continues by the Federal government to hunt down people 
suspected of defending the environment and protecting the lives of animals 
from cruelty and violence.

This is a strange nation indeed where terrorism is daily practiced on 
defenseless creatures, where eco-systems are plundered and turned into 
wastelands, where killing and destruction is defended in the name of 
profits and where compassionate people are the object of persecution for 
the crime of association with a movement that is attempting to stop the
killing, the injuries, the tortures and the damage to wetlands, forests, 
lakes, rivers and the oceans.

I will be working to try and get my sentence minimized. The maximum is six 
months for contempt but I could receive a lighter sentence by the 
sentencing judge. It is worrying for me because I have an elderly mother 
that, as the only child, I am taking care of and I have obligations to my 
dogs, cats and to the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Letters of support would be very helpful. I would like to request that 
people who have supported me write a letter appealing to the Judge to 
consider my need to take care of my mother and to continue my work for the 
environment and for animals.

And finally, thank you all who donated to my defense fund. Without your 
support, I would have been railroaded by the prosecutors into being 
convicted of an unjust perjury charge which may have seen me incarcerated 
for up to five years.

In this respect, we have won. The federal prosecutors failed to send me to 
prison for perjury, failed to convict me of a felony, and failed to 
intimidate me into cooperation with their witch hunt.

For that I thank you very, very much.

Allison Lance Watson

Please send letters to:

The Honorable Monica Benton

c/o Angelo J. Calfo

Yarmuth Wilsdon Calfo

2500 IDX Tower

Seattle, WA 98104



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