(Update, Mar. 27, 2008: Coronado was sentenced to a year and a day in prison after pleading guilty to demonstrating how to make a destructive device with the intent that someone would commit arson. The plea was entered in exchange for prosecutors not pursuing a charge in Arizona or a similar case stemming from remarks Coronado made as a college in Washington, DC. See Activist Coronado gets year in prison for arson talk, San Diego Union-Tribune, Mar. 27, 2008.)

Revolutionary Summer Revolves 'round Again
"Teacher say what?"

By FCUSA executive director Teresa Platt

A mistrial was declared Sept. 19 in the trial of "eco-anarchist" Rodney Coronado after a San Diego, California jury said it was deadlocked.

Coronado, 41, was charged under a federal law that makes it a crime to describe how to make an explosive device with the intent of encouraging a lawless act.(1) He faced as much as 20 years in prison.

Coronado has been involved with the extremists of the Earth/animal liberation movements since he was a teenager. He worked for PeTA,1987-90, and received PeTA funds for his legal fees when he was convicted in a Michigan lab arson case that also implicated PeTA co-founder Ingrid Newkirk.(2) In 2003, the same year Rodney toured the country with a stop in San Diego to teach how to create incendiary devices, PeTA's Newkirk stated, "We gave him money for his defense because it is America and you are entitled to a legal defense and he's a fine young man and a school teacher."

However, it is illegal to teach others how to create an incendiary device, a violation of federal law 18 USC § 842 (p)(2)(A). Coronado ran afoul of this statute, which was introduced by California's Sen. Dianne Feinstein and adopted by Congress in 1997 in the wake of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

In Coronado's trial, the burden on the jury of 12 was to deliver a verdict based on the  charges and the government was required to prove that:

• The defendant taught or demonstrated the making or use of a destructive device.
• The defendant intended that the teaching or demonstration of the device would be used for, or in furtherance of, a federal crime of violent activity.
• At the time, both the intent and tendency of his actions were to provoke or incite an imminent crime of violence.

The jury agreed on points 1 and 2, but was deadlocked on point 3. Judge Jeffrey Miller had instructed the jury that they had to find that arson was "imminent" and "likely to occur" due to the force of Coronado's words. "The rubber meets the road, I think, when it comes to jury instructions," Miller said. "Imminence," he stated, "has not really been defined by the courts." Citing numerous legal precedents, Miller made it clear that he believed the law, as written, is not clear.(4) It was easy to see that, with such instructions, a jury would have a hard time convicting Coronado on Point 3 as it all came down to how one defines "imminent."

All this has to make one wonder. If Coronado had given his speech the day before the ELF $50 million arson in San Diego, would he have been found guilty even if it was not proven that his demonstration of the device was directly related to that particular arson? In other words, one day later, would that arson have been "imminent" enough to convict? Imagine how Point 3 would have been argued under those circumstances.

Obviously, this law needs to be tightened up. Such instruction should be banned simply because it is wrong and patently dangerous to teach the general public, including impressionable young people, how to create bombs while encouraging them to put what they're taught into practice.

Whether they never act on that advice, act on it that night or 20 years later, is beside the point.

Blowback to 2003

In the summer of 2003, convicted ALF arsonist Coronado was booked by San Diego Revolution Summer organizer David Agranoff for a presentation on the evening of Aug. 1. At 3 a.m. the same day, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) torched a local apartment building under construction, leaving a banner stating, "If you build it, we will burn it. The ELF'S are mad." Damages: over $50 million. That same evening, Coronado presented his now-standard instruction on basic arson mixed with an anarchist's "maximum destruction, not minimum damage" message.(5) He also demonstrated how to create a simple incendiary device, a lecture he's given before, once filmed at American University by the Center for Consumer Freedom.

For giving such instruction in San Diego, Coronado was charged in 2005 and brought before the jury in 2007.

Mixed Messages, Animal Rightists, EarthFirst!ers and Lots of Lawyers

In the courtroom packed with tattooed vegans, Coronado's wife Chrysta pressed a small leather Native American medicine pouch to her chest. Inside was a clutch of buffalo fur, some dried sage and a few gifts from Coronado's children.

Leather? Fur? Shocking! Confusing! After years of attacking production of such items from wild or farmed animals, after years of working with and for vegan warriors like PeTA, why didn't Coronado insist that his wife clutch petrochemical-based fake fur and pleather items to her heart? Talk about mixed messages.

With Judge Jeffrey Miller presiding over the jury trial in the San Diego Federal District Court, the government's legal team consisted of attorneys John Parmley and Michael Skerlos, acting on behalf of US citizens. A court room spectator reported that Coronado did not lack for legal support. Over a dozen people were actively involved in his legal team. Who paid the bills is not known, but the bulk of the legal work was done by San Diego attorney Gerald Singleton,(6) reportedly without pay.(7)

Seen offering input to Coronado's legal team was Bryan Pease, an animal rights attorney who sports an arrest record for animal rights-related crimes including a 2004 attack with a stun gun in La Jolla over a disagreement regarding seals' rights. Also advising was Karen Picket, a long-time EarthFirst!er and former wife of Mike Roselle who founded EarthFirst! Her official capacity is press liaison for the SupportRod.org propaganda website as she is listed on a biased Sept. 17 press release.

Tony Serra of San Franciso's Pier5 Law Offices gave a long-winded closing argument for the defense, hammering on the "imminent" point over and over again.

Predictably, Serra raised the banner of free speech, comparing Rodney's work to the Boston Tea Party, a tired analogy at best. Of course, the target of the Boston Tea Party was well chosen - a powerful monarchy on the other side of the Atlantic - and the damages were limited to one shipment of tea owned by a great empire. In such a carefully orchestrated act of civil disobedience, or terrorism, this illegal action made a statement far beyond the value of the tea involved. However, the action did illustrate the level of anger present in the colonies over "taxation without representation." Publicity was part of the strategy. Terrorism's need for publicity has not changed. Eco-terrorism needs and uses ecology as a form of public relations cover; but it has more in common with anarchy than ecology.

But, if the Boston Tea Party participants had focused their destructive acts on the locally-owned tea house, the Starbucks of its time, breaking its windows or burning it down, the neighbors would have tracked down, locked up, and possibly hanged the criminals. If the local carriage trade were attacked or the fur shop burned down, if criminals had stolen and abandoned farm animals, burned feed mills, destroyed logging and mining equipment, crushed crops, torched houses and ski chalets, blown up the university labs or sent threats and bombs to their neighbors, the citizens of Boston would have seen such actions as a crime wave against them and acted accordingly.

Similar acts, under a variety of "group" names, have been perpetrated by US citizens against US citizens in the last 20 years, with a startling increase in costs and dangers to people, firefighters included, over the last decade. A tiny band of domestic terrorists, or "eco-terrorists," has declared war on the rest of us, using every bit of publicity they can wring out of the system to generate fear far out of proportion to their numbers. In the last year, hundreds of investigations, court cases and guilty pleas have resulted in dozens of them finally going to jail.

While Coronado's lawyers argued the case centered on the First Amendment's guarantees of free speech, other see it differently. As jury foreman Glenn Burton of Carlsbad told the San Diego Union Tribune, "I don't believe it was about free speech. It was about the law ... this specific law."

As a citizen of the US, Coronado is subject to all the same laws the rest of us must live by, including the myriad environmental laws which make America the most challenging, and expensive, place on Earth to farm, fish, log, mine and harvest natural resources.

Backfire

Only three people testified for the defense. All had attended the Coronado speech, and all three had been previously interviewed by the Grand Jury investigation before the trial. Cari Anne Shaw, David Agranoff's wife, now living in Portland, testified about originally asking the question that led to Coronado teaching on incendiary device construction.

Michelle Luneau, a UC Berkeley student testified she was there with her 13-year-old brother to listen to the speech. The third person to testify was Colleen Deitzel, who co-owns the Green Store and Recycling Center in Ocean Beach, what she describes as "an ecological center," opened Earth Day 1989. Deitzel, a 25-year resident of Ocean Beach, is a part of the Ocean Beach Merchants Association and is "leading the non-violent campaigns against Starbucks." Deitzel testified on the generalities of the meeting and stated she couldn't remember much detail since she'd attended hundreds of speeches. But during cross examination, she admitted she'd told the Grand Jury that it was one of the two most radical events she'd ever attended -- the other being a speech by Sea Shepherd's Paul Watson, Coronado's mentor. She admitted she'd previously stated that a friend who went with her was appalled that Coronado could say what he was saying. Her testimony was a total backfire for the defense's case.

While Agranoff videotaped the first hour of the conference, the Q&A session with Coronado was not taped. The one-hour tape simply ran out of time. During the trial, the defense submitted an actual sound recording of the event, including the Q&A, an item the prosecution had sought since 2003.

The tape clarified a pivotal point of disagreement in the trial. A law enforcement officer testified that his notes on the meeting stated that Coronado was asked how to make a bomb for an action, but the recording revealed that the actual question was how do you make an incendiary device, according to our source in the courtroom. Either way, the question led to the answer, a demonstration of how to create a simple incendiary device, which is an illegal act. "You can still use, you know, the tactics we engage in," Coronado said, referring to the incendiary device. 

Where the tape came from is a mystery, but we must wonder who taped it and why it was not submitted into evidence earlier. In California, it is illegal to tape a conversation without permission. And in California and the rest of the US, it is also illegal to withhold evidence from a trial.

What Next?

The prosecution has a few options. They can forget about moving forward and abandon the effort. Or they can take the case to a higher court for retrial. Or they can use the leverage of continuing the case to make a deal with Coronado. Coronado, who is free on a $50,000 bond, will return to court Sept. 28 when Judge Miller will ask lawyers how they plan to proceed.

And for the rest of us? For citizens who follow the strength and clarity of laws used to battle crime, it appears that a clarification of the word "imminent" is needed in federal law 18 USC § 842 (p)(2)(A), so the next jury can easily do its duty.

Notes:

(1) "Mistrial called in 'eco-anarchist' trial: A San Diego jury says it is deadlocked in the case against Rodney Coronado, accused of inciting others to violence," by Tony Perry, LA Times, Sept. 20, 2007.
(2) See Coronado profile at activistcash.com. While PeTA has not commented, Coronado states he worked for PeTA from 1987 to 1990 infiltrating research labs. "It was the easiest time I had," Coronado says, remarking on the regularity of his wages. As quoted in  "Man behind the mask makes fur fly in his war," by Paige St. John, Detroit News, Mar. 13, 1995. For reference to Newkirk's involvement, see Coronado Sentencing Memorandum, 1995.
(3) John Stossels' "Give Me A Break" on "20/20" on Feb. 7, 2003, "Has PETA Gone Hog Wild? Animal Rights vs. Human Rights." Another Coronado quote from this piece, "I wish I didn't have to stand up here and talk about and justify and encourage direct action - encourage breaking the law, encourage burning down buildings that are built for life's destruction, but I do."
(4) "EDITOR'S NOTE: Be careful what you say," by David Rolland, City Beat, Sept. 20, 2007.
(5) See "AR2003: Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt," FCUSA commentary, Aug. 12, 2003.
(6) Singleton is also a lawyer for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).
(7) "Radical activist's case ends in mistrial," by Onell Soto, San Diego Union Tribune, Sept. 19, 2007,
(8) See "J.Tony Serra, the War Tax Resisting Attorney," by Ed Hedemann, National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.
(9) See "The believer behind bars," San Francisco magazine. Other clients are taken from the Pier5law.com website.
(10) Ellie Nessler served three years for the murder of a man who molested her son, and is now in California prison for manufacturing meth. Her son, William Nessler, was also involved in beating a man to death.

See also:

Operation Bite Back: Rod Coronado's war to save American Wildnerness, by Dean Kuipers. FCUSA book review, July 24, 2009.

For further information contact: Teresa Platt, Executive Director, Fur Commission USA, PMB 506, 826 Orange Avenue, Coronado, CA 92118-2698 USA, (619) 575-0139, (619) 272-2467/fax, furfarmers@aol.com, www.furcommission.com.

To take a cyber-tour of a fur farm, visit Fur Commission USA's Fur on Film at http://www.furcommission.com/video/index.htm

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