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<font face="Times, Times" size=3><b>Lauren Regan, Atty & Exec. Dir.,
CLDC, 541-687-9180<br>
Ben Rosenfeld, Atty & Board Member, CLDC, 415-285-8091<br><br>
For Immediate Release<br><br>
January 29, 2010<br><br>
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit Declines to Release 20 Year
Old <br>
Carrie Feldman, Jailed For More Than Two Months On Contempt of Grand
Jury<br><br>
Civil Liberties Monitors Charge That Federal Prosecutor Is On Personal
Crusade <br>
Against Anarchist Ideology; Courts Do Not Rein Him In<br><br>
</b>
Davenport, IA: U.S. Attorney Clifford R. Cronk III is using his
office’s investigation of an alleged 2004 animal rights-related break-in
at the University of Iowa to harass and punish targets whom he claims
identify as anarchists, a political ideology dating back to the early
19<sup>th</sup> Century. To date, neither his superiors in the
Department of Justice, nor the federal courts, have done anything to
curtail his abuse of power. In behavior reminiscent of the darkest
days of the McCarthy witch hunts, Cronk argues in court documents that
anarchists are domestic terrorists who should be locked up for posing a
threat to civil society based on nothing but the prosecutor’s unfounded
political bias.<br><br>
The
Animal Liberation Front reportedly claimed credit for the 2004 break-in
at the University of Iowa’s Psychology Department, removing lab rats and
mice and vandalizing computers. There were no reported
injuries. In November 2009, just days before the five year statute
of limitations expired (the date after which the government could no
longer bring charges), prosecutors subpoenaed Scott DeMuth, a 22-year old
Dakota language student and sociology graduate student at the University
of Minnesota, and 20-year old Carrie Feldman, to testify before a grand
jury said to be investigating the incident. The government gave no
public reason for believing the two had any information. Both
appeared before the grand jury but refused on principle to testify, and
each publicly denounced the process as a star chamber which utilizes
secret evidence and deprives witnesses of their right to counsel and
other basic constitutional protections.<br>
<a name="SearchTerm"></a><br>
Over
thirty years ago, Justice William O. Douglas expressed almost the
identical sentiment, writing “This great institution of the past has long
ceased to be the guardian of the people for which purpose it was created
at Runnymede. . .Any experienced prosecutor will admit that he can indict
anybody at any time for almost anything before any grand jury.”
<i>United States v. Dionisio</i><a name="SR;176"></a>, 410 U.S. 19, 23
(1973 (Douglas, J., dissenting, quoting Chicago-based district judge
William Campbell).<br>
<br>
In
clear retaliation for refusing to testify, U.S. Attorney Cronk had DeMuth
indicted under the new Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act for conspiring to
commit the lab break-in, despite the fact that the law was enacted two
years <i>after</i> the break-in and cannot apply retroactively; despite
the fact that DeMuth was a minor at the time of the alleged break-in; and
despite the prosecutor’s apparent total lack of evidence. Upon
reviewing the so-called “evidence,” a federal magistrate judge
wrote:<br><br>
The Court viewed portions of a videotape depiction of the damage
inflicted at the University of Iowa during this occurrence. At least four
individuals could be seen during the taping of the event. Special Agent
Reinwart was of the opinion that one of these individuals had a
resemblance in terms of physique and stature with Demuth. However,
Special Agent Reinwart did not testify that he knew Demuth participated
in the occurrence. (See Court’s Order of 11/24/09, p1-2.)<br><br>
Nevertheless, U.S. Attorney Cronk is going forward with his prosecution
of DeMuth. <i>Persecution</i> is a better word for it. After
the court ordered DeMuth released from jail pending trial, the U.S.
Attorney maneuvered to keep him locked up over the long Thanksgiving
holiday, resorting to unethical and unconstitutional political
stereotyping and guilt by association. He argued:<br><br>
[T]he defendant did not deny that he is an anarchist. He did not deny
involvement with ALF. . .Defendant’s writings, literature, and conduct
suggest that he is an anarchist and associated with the ALF movement.
Therefore, he is a domestic terrorist. As such, he poses a serious of
risk of danger to those he opposes and to law enforcement as well as a
risk of flight to avoid prosecution. (See Government’s Motion for
Revocation of Release Order, 11-25-09, pg. 3.)<br><br>
Meanwhile, on November 17, the court found Carrie Feldman in contempt for
refusing to testify before the grand jury, even though she never actually
disobeyed the court’s order. Rather, the court presumed that she
would refuse to testify based on her <i>prior</i> statements. “This
is a plain violation of Supreme Court precedent,” said Lauren Regan,
Executive Director of the Eugene Oregon-based Civil Liberties Defense
Center. “The witness must be brought before the grand jury and
refuse to answer questions put to her in front of them before she can be
found in contempt.” In this case, after Feldman asserted a Fifth
Amendment privilege not to testify, the court ordered her to accept
immunity for her testimony, finding that this negated the
privilege. However, the court never sent her back before the grand
jury before holding her in contempt.<br><br>
At the
contempt hearing, Feldman’s lawyer put her father on the stand to testify
that incarcerating her would be harmful to his ailing mother-in-law whom
Feldman looks after. The prosecutor pounced on this opportunity to
interrogate her father irrelevantly about whether his daughter is an
anarchist, rather than concern himself with the legal issues at
hand. (See transcript of hearing, 11-17-09.)<br><br>
“If
the prosecutor had substituted the word ‘capitalist’ or ‘socialist’, or
‘Christian’ or ‘Muslim’ for every utterance of the word ‘anarchist,’
correction by his superiors or the courts would have been swift,” said
Attorney Ben Rosenfeld, a member of the Board of the Civil Liberties
Defense Center. “Mr. Cronk appears to have forgotten, and no one in
charge seems to care, that we are not supposed to condemn entire groups
of people based on their beliefs.” Cronk later sought to defend his
interrogation of Feldman’s father, writing:<br><br>
By definition, anarchy is a “state of society without government or law”
and an anarchist is “a person who seeks to overturn by violence all
constituted forms and institutions of society and government, with no
purpose of establishing any other system of order in the place of that
destroyed.” (See Government’s Sur Reply Brief, 1-21-10, pg. 10.)
<br><br>
Cronk did not attribute the quotations, which appear to come from
dictionary.com, and which differ starkly from those found elsewhere,
including at wikipedia.com.<br><br>
“He
could not be more ignorant about what anarchism actually means,”
Rosenfeld said. “If he had read anything by actual anarchist
thinkers, he would know that anarchism is an intellectual philosophy
which holds that governments everywhere are constituted to protect the
rich, that they share more repressive similarities than differences, and
that we should all work together at the local and grass roots levels to
lift up the meek among us. In a sense, it is the best of
libertarianism and democratic socialism combined.” Lauren Regan
added: “Smearing all anarchists as violent criminals is like
blaming all Christians for the murder of abortion doctors. The
irony is that by engaging in a political witch hunt, the U.S. Attorney is
underscoring the anarchist critique of our current system, as well as
people’s distrust of the grand jury process.”<br><br>
Mr.
Cronk’s personal crusade is not without official context. On
January 14, 2006, FBI spokesman David Picard told CBS affiliate Channel
13 in Sacramento: “One of our major domestic terrorism programs is the
ALF, ELF, and anarchist movement, and it’s a national program for the
FBI.” His statement echoes J. Edgar Hoover’s infamous description
of the FBI’s ideologically-driven Counterintelligence Program
(“COINTELPRO”), designed in Hoover’s words to “expose, disrupt,
misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” undesirable political
targets. Similar to Cronk’s conduct in this case, another federal
prosecutor, Wallace Kleindienst, told reporters in December 2005,
following animal rights activist Rod Coronado’s conviction for
nonviolently disrupting a mountain lion hunt in Arizona: “I know he
wasn’t tried here for being a violent anarchist. This trial wasn’t about
Rod Coronado being a terrorist, but he is one.”<br><br>
The
government’s careless and anti-constitutional syllogism that animal
rights activists equal “anarchists” equal “domestic terrorists” appears
to come from the upper echelons of the Department of Justice. On
January 20, 2006, in a press release announcing the first arrests in
Operation Backfire, the Oregon-centered investigation into a series of
politically motivated eco-arsons, FBI Director Robert Mueller vowed of
the ALF and ELF: “We are committed to working with our partners to
disrupt and dismantle these movements....” Since then, he has
repeatedly revealed that the FBI is targeting anarchists generally.
For example, addressing the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs on September 10, 2007, he equated anarchists with
terrorists, saying: “Single issue groups and domestic terrorists, which
include white supremacists, anarchists, and eco-terrorists, continue to
be a concern.”<br><br>
“In
light of such inflammatory remarks by the FBI’s own Director, it is clear
that prosecutors like Mr. Cronk have been given the green light to ignore
the Constitution and the law, and would seek to punish Carrie Feldman and
Scott DeMuth based on nothing but his labeling of them as anarchists,”
said Attorney Lauren Regan. Rosenfeld added, “Our government should
not be in the business of trying to ‘dismantle’ political movements, as
the FBI Director put it.”<br><br>
Meanwhile, more than two months after the court found her in contempt,
20-year Carrie Feldman still sits in jail, accused of no crime. She
appealed her contempt ruling, but in a 2-1 split decision issued on
January 22, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit declined to
release her. The majority gave no reason other than to say that
“sealed documents [submitted by] the government ... indicate that the
statute of limitations has <i>not necessarily</i> expired...” (emphasis
added). However, the dissenting Judge – who presumably viewed the
same secret evidence submitted by the government – found that the statute
of limitations <i>had expired</i>, and therefore that the government
cannot hold Feldman under subpoena, since grand juries may not be used to
gather evidence for prosecution once a crime has been charged, as it has
in this case. The Court did not address the allegations of
prosecutorial bias, or whether the lower court erred when it found
Feldman in contempt without sending her back into the grand jury room to
testify. (See Appellate Order, 1-22-10.)<br><br>
“Everyone thinks we’re moving toward a greater recognition of civil
rights under Obama,” said Attorney Ben Rosenfeld. “Instead we’re
going backward – all the way back to the sedition laws, and the political
inquisitions of Joseph McCarthy.”<br><br>
(For
more information, see the support website for Carrie Feldman and Scott
DeMuth at
<a href="http://cldc.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f4405adbf2a1180c42d196efe&id=d449d3d972&e=ee63b50338">
www.davenportgrandjury.wordpress.com</a>, where a number of the documents
cited in this press release are posted.)<br><br>
<br><br>
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