March 2005

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Two Minneapolis Juries Support "International Law" Defense

Steve Clemens has been an Anabaptist peace activist since 1969 and is a member of the Community of St. Martin in Minneapolis.

Their actions were a week apart in July 2004; the "not guilty" verdicts from their respective juries also came within one week of each other, the following December.

Protest at Republican National Convention in New York City, August 2004. © 2004 Ellen Shub.

For nine years, peace activists have held a weekly vigil outside the corporate headquarters of Alliant TechSystems (ATK), the largest supplier to the US Army of anti-personnel landmines, cluster bombs, and depleted uranium munitions.

AlliantACTION, a group that has faithfully opposed these indiscriminate weapons of war, created a notebook of documents, entitled "Employee Liabilities of Weapons Manufacturers Under International Law," and attempted to deliver these documents to corporate officials. Along with a cover letter addressed to ATK's Chairman and CEO, these documents spell out how landmines, cluster bombs, and DU munitions violate international law, which prohibits the manufacture and sale of "indiscriminate" weapons, weapons which cause long-term damage to the natural environment, weapons which are unduly inhumane, and weapons which continue to kill and maim long after a conflict or war has ended. The documents also offer four case studies of German manufacturers who were convicted of war crimes by the Nuremberg Tribunals.

Four defendants (John and Marie Braun, Carol Masters, and Steve Clemens) were arrested as they approached the entrance to ATK with the documents and requested a meeting with corporate officers. The second group of four activists from the Anathoth Farm Community in Luck, Wisconsin (John Heid, Jane Hosking, John LaForge, and Mike Miles) conducted a similar action the following week.

The criminal trespass law in Minnesota contains a provision for a "claim of right" which allows defendants to argue before the court that permission to remain on another's property is based on another "rule, statute, or law." In court, both groups of defendants were allowed to present evidence in defense of this claimed right. The jury was informed that under Article VI of the US Constitution, any treaty signed by the US government is "the supreme law of the land" and that all judges and courts are bound by its laws. The defendants then entered excerpts from the Hague Treaty, the Geneva Accords, the UN Convention on Conventional Weapons, and the Nuremberg Principles as evidence for the jury to consider.

John LaForge testified that his understanding of the Nuremberg Tribunal rulings was that they were intended to prevent these illegal weapons from being manufactured, making the planning of a war using these weapons a war crime. In the other trial, Steve Clemens testified that the Nuremberg Principles prevent manufacturers from "hiding behind property laws" when they are making illegal weapons. Quoting from Principle VII, Clemens pointed out that "complicity with a war crime" is itself a violation of international law. Because we know that ATK makes these weapons and because we know how they work and that they are clearly illegal, we are compelled to take nonviolent action to try to prevent these crimes from taking place. Both groups of defendants also informed the juries of the vote of the UN Committee on Human Rights, which specifically named depleted uranium and cluster bombs as illegal.

This was not the first time that citizen juries have chosen to respect the defense of international law in Minneapolis courtrooms. In October 2003, 19 defendants were acquitted of criminal trespass at ATK during the "combat phase" of the war in Iraq by a six-person jury. In 1997, 79 defendants were also cleared by a jury when they cited international law in their defense against trespass charges focusing on a protest of ATK's manufacture of anti-personnel landmines.

Many of the AlliantACTION activists were part of the Honeywell Project, a campaign started in 1968 against ATK's predecessor, the Honeywell Corporation, for its manufacture of cluster bombs dropped in Indochina by the millions. The campaign against Honeywell resulted in thousands of arrests over more than a decade of public demonstrations. When public pressure built against Honeywell, it finally decided to "spin off' its weapons production into a new company, Alliant TechSystems.

AlliantACTION vows to continue its nonviolent witness, calling for "peace conversion with no loss of jobs." For more information, click the AlliantACTION link on www.circlevision.org.

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