Blackwater protesters lose appeals of closed trials

CURRITUCK, N.C.

Seven protesters arrested at Blackwater's Moyock headquarters in October lost their court appeals Wednesday. But they won what they had been denied last month: a public forum in which to denounce what they see as the company's crimes in Iraq.

The seven had been convicted in District Court in December, all but one of them in trials that were closed to the media and the public. Those verdicts were appealed and the case was retried Wednesday in Superior Court before a jury.

Judge Russell Duke, who presided over the all-day trial, allowed the defendants some leeway to explain why they drove a battered station wagon onto Blackwater's property Oct. 20 and defaced two of the private military company's signs with red handprints.

The protest was part of a re-enactment of a Sept. 16 shooting involving Blackwater security contractors in Baghdad in which 17 Iraqi civilians died. The shooting spurred multiple investigations and prompted the Iraqi government to demand Blackwater's ouster from the country.

Blackwater has said its contractors reacted appropriately to an insurgent attack. None has faced criminal charges so far.

Duke will sentence the protesters this morning. They face maximum jail terms of 60 to 80 days. All seven were convicted of second-degree trespassing; six were also convicted of resisting arrest.

Most of the defendants are affiliated with the Catholic Worker Movement, a faith-based group that serves the poor and preaches nonviolence.

"We do works of mercy and oppose works of war," Steve Baggarly, one of the protesters, told the jury. Baggarly and his wife run the Catholic Worker house in Norfolk, where they take in homeless people and have a soup line for the hungry.

Baggarly and his co-defendants argued that it was their responsibility as citizens to call attention in a dramatic way to Blackwater's actions in Iraq, which they characterized as war crimes.

The red handprints they smeared over Blackwater's bear-claw logo "would be a much more appropriate logo for Blackwater," Baggarly said. "We're all responsible for what is happening in Iraq. We all have bloody hands."

Mary Grace, a teacher from Madison County, Va., was not part of the re-enactment but was arrested after watching it and then stepping onto Blackwater's property and kneeling to pray. In emotional testimony, she said she risked arrest in an attempt to stop what she sees as the slaughter of innocent civilians.

"I've called my representatives. I've written letters to the editor. I have done everything legally that I know of to stop it," she said. "I knew that more people would pay attention if we got arrested."

Defendant Bill Streit of Louisa County, Va., who made the closing argument for the seven, said they were acting in a distinguished tradition of civil disobedience from the Boston Tea Party to the marches of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

" 'Made in the U.S.A.' is written all over those bullets that are flying all over Baghdad," he said. "We're sick at heart about that."

After deliberating for 45 minutes, the jury of nine women and three men appeared to agree with Assistant District Attorney Kevin Leahy, who said in his closing argument that the trial was not about the war in Iraq or Blackwater's conduct there, but a simple case of trespassing.

"These people chose to go on private property and have a demonstration," he said. "They want to talk about something else."

The others convicted were Beth Brockman of Durham, N.C.; Mark Colville of New Haven, Conn.; Peter DeMott of Ithaca, N.Y.; and Laura Marks of Ayden, N.C.

District Judge Edgar Barnes, who closed his courtroom in the protesters' original trials, is the subject of a complaint to the state Judicial Standards Commission by the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina. By not allowing a public trial, the ACLU contends, Barnes violated the constitutional rights of the defendants, the media and the public.

Bill Sizemore, (757) 446-2276, bill.sizemore@pilotonline.com