[Pnews] NATO 3 get prison terms ranging from 5 to 8 years

[Prisoner News]

  NATO 3 get prison terms ranging from 5 to 8 years

April 25, 2014
http://prisonbooks.info/2014/04/25/nato-3-get-prison-terms-ranging-from-5-to-8-years/#more-4592
<http://prisonbooks.info/tag/sentencing/>

Three out-of-state men were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 5 to 
8 years in prison today for making crude Molotov cocktails in the days 
before the NATO summit in Chicago in May 2012.

Prosecutors had sought 14-year terms for each of the men, raising the 
specter of the Boston Marathon bombings during their arguments at the 
sentencing hearing.

The so-called NATO 3 --- Brian Church, Jared Chase and Brent Betterly 
--- were convicted in February of possessing incendiary devices but were 
acquitted of more serious terrorism charges, a fact stressed by their 
attorneys. Church was sentenced to 5 years, Chase to 8 years and 
Betterly to 6.

Chase's attorney, Thomas Anthony Durkin, contended that prosecutors 
didn't seem to understand they lost the terrorism case and were trying 
to "salvage a lousy, rotten case" with stiff prison sentences.

"They still don't get that the whole world is laughing at them," Durkin 
told Judge Thaddeus Wilson.

A 48-page sentencing memo by Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Jack 
Blakey, who heads the office's special prosecutions bureau, said the 
trio have displayed a "defiant refusal to take responsibility for their 
conduct."

Addressing the judge before he imposed sentence, Church took offense to 
the prosecution comparisons to the Boston Marathon bombings.

"I do love my country," he said. "To be compared to an atrocity hurts, 
your honor. It rips my heart apart."

Betterly apologized and said that anarchism isn't synonymous with terrorism.

"We weren't serious about much of what was said" in conversations 
secretly recorded by two undercover Chicago police officers who had 
infiltrated their group, said Betterly, who nonetheless insisted he was 
not ducking responsibility.

The idea that he came to Chicago with "hatred and violent intentions 
couldn't be further from the truth," Betterly said.

The three had faced between 4 and 30 years in prison. Their trial 
earlier this year was the first time Cook County  prosecutors had 
brought charges under the state's terrorism statute, enacted after the 
Sept. 11 attacks.

Prosecutors alleged the three plotted attacks on police stations, 
President Barack Obama's campaign headquarters and Mayor Rahm Emanuel's 
home.

But their attorneys argued that the three were "goofs" who talked big 
and were goaded on by two undercover officers.

"My mind, through a pot and beer induced haze, was never anywhere near 
even wanting to commit property damage, let alone blowing things up or 
burning things down," Church wrote in a letter to the court that was 
excerpted in the prosecution filing.

"Those who know who I am, who understand the depth of my desire for 
truly progressive change and peace, know that I am not capable of 
harboring such mindlessly violent intentions," Betterly wrote.

Prosecutors wrote that Betterly has continued to "defy and threaten" law 
enforcement while in jail, making  "an inappropriate racial comment to 
an African American correctional officer" telling another to "watch out 
pig" and also punching the window of a guard station and yelling "f--- 
the police."

While Blakey acknowledged that other defendants who had possessed 
Molotov cocktails in federal cases in Oregon and Minnesota were 
sentenced to no more than 4 years, he wrote the NATO 3 did not plead 
guilty and "have taken great pains to abdicate all responsibility for 
their conduct."

The three are just as deserving of lengthy prison sentences as those 
convicted of trying to arrange a murder, Blakely argued.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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