Letters to the Editor
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Nobody's Perfect Here (but Tracy Tullis isn't even close)
I live about a mile from the Center for Urban Horticulture. The idea that someone would torch the building, putting unknown toxins and carcinogens into the atmosphere for me to breathe, in the name of the environment, is absurd. That these people--whoever they are or were--also got it wrong about what the alleged target of their actions was in fact doing, simply compounds the arrogance and stupidity of their actions. If their intent was to send a message to scientists not to take particular actions, by essentially doing whatever the hell they wanted without regard for its truth or any of the consequences, they deserve any punishment that can be meted out to them.
A mile in the other direction from me is the house of Tom Wales, an Assistant U.S. Attorney who was murdered in cold blood just after September 11. Notwithstanding all the powers of the federal government--and the rather obvious point that killing an Assistant U.S. Attorney is bad for morale--the FBI has committed insufficient resources to solving the case and the Bush Administration fired the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington, John McKay, for complaining about that. So it's not inappropriate to complain about the balance of resources used by the DOJ and FBI in this area.
Despite what others have suggested, I would be surprised if the trial were a show trial. Judge Frankliin Burgess was a Clinton appointee, a longtime federal magistrate before that, and I believe he is well-respected on the bench. The Tacoma division of the Western District of Washington covers Tacoma, Olympia and Vancouver, which are solidly Democratic. It's a bit divided between the greenies in Brian Baird's district and the more military-oritented folks in Norm Dicks', but it's nonetheless not exactly redneck country.
Like everyone else here, I have no idea what the jury actually heard or saw. I do know that they were expressly given all the exculpatory-sounding evidence in Tullis's article, and all the information impeaching the credibility of the two eyewitnesses. That the jury came up with a split verdict (and the government and Waters' agreed today that she would not be retried on the other charges: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6600ap_wst_ecoterror_trial.html), does not indicate to me that it was a verdict where the jury was railroaded or bamboozled.
I too sat on a jury and my experience was that I was remarkably impressed with how seriously my co-jurors took their responsibility, how rapidly they understood difficult concepts like reasonable doubt, how familiar they became with the evidence. There was no physical evidence in our case that determined guilt or innocence--it is often the nature of crimes and criminals that they leave none, CSI notwithstanding--so it was a swearing contest. We reached our verdict based on our determination of whom we thought was telling the truth, when victim, defendant and main witness gave contradictory testimony. That did not mean we automatically had to find the defendant not guilty, and indeed we all agreed he was guilty.
Probably the most offensive and ignorant part of Tullis's article is her use of the physical description of Waters as though it has the slightest value to the determination of her guilt or innocence. If I were to pick someone to be the lookout for a crime being committed on the UW campus, who better to pick than someone who looks like a UW grad student, someone whose talking into a walkie-talkie (which presumably would look like a cellphone) would raise no alarm with a cop or security guard? To imply that she doesn't look like a terrorist not only, as others have said, indicates that Tullis thinks there is a terrorist look, but also justifies some of the worst post-9/11 sweeps of people with dark skins who speak Arabic.
Waters was not convicted of the crime for which she might have gotten 30 years. The arson charges she was convicted of carry a sentence of 5 to 20 years, and she has not yet been sentenced. So there is nothing to say whatever about whether her sentence is too long or too short. We don't know what it will be.
The bombing of the Street of Dreams homes, if it was done by ELF and if it was done to try to contaminate the jury for Waters' trial, reminds me of Charles Manson lifting the "Nixon Guilty, Manson Says" headline from the LA Times in the courtroom during his trial. While I would not want to deny Briana Waters her right to a fair trial, are we to be subjected to another insane burning if she is tried again?