War protester convicted

Despite his arguments that citizens have the right to say “No” to their government, a local attorney was convicted of criminal trespassing for saying “No” to the war in Iraq in a National Guard recruiting office on North Division.

A six-person jury in Spokane District Court deliberated for less than 20 minutes Thursday before convicting Jim Sheehan of first-degree criminal trespass during a protest of the war in March.

Sheehan represented himself and was the only witness for the defense. On the witness stand, he told jurors he believes the Iraq war was based on lies, manipulation and corruption.

“There is a point where I cannot be complicit anymore,” he said. “It just became important for me to say, ‘No.’ “

But City Prosecutor Darla Copeland Gross argued that Sheehan’s way of saying “No” infringed on the rights of the guardsmen at the office.

“He wants to ignore the fact that other people might feel differently and other people have rights,” Copeland Gross said. “When you start ignoring other people’s rights, there is a price to pay.”

Judge Adalia Hille, a visiting judge assigned to the case, sentenced him to 365 days in jail and a fine of $5,000. Hille, however, suspended 364 days of the jail term and $4,500 of the fine, on the condition he not have any criminal convictions for the next year, including civil disobedience.

Sheehan said he had no such plans, in part because Tuesday’s elections have shifted power in Congress to the Democrats.

“I don’t know if things will change, but I hope they will,” he said.

Sheehan never disputed that he was among a group of about eight protesters who went into the recruiting office shortly before noon, read statements, took pictures, sang “We shall not be moved” and chanted.

“It was very peaceful,” Sgt. James Kane told jurors. But when protesters demanded guardsmen call Gov. Chris Gregoire to tell her to bring members of the Washington National Guard home from Iraq, Kane told them “ain’t gonna happen.”

Kane and other guardsmen asked the protesters to leave, and when that didn’t happen, they called police. Spokane police came, also told the protesters to leave the office and suggested they protest outside on the public sidewalk.

Some went outside but others stayed, Officer Max Hewitt said. When police said the protesters would be arrested, Sheehan was among the first to stand up and put his hands behind his back to be handcuffed.

“Everything was totally and completely peaceful?” Sheehan asked Hewitt on cross-examination.

“Yes,” Hewitt replied.

Taking the stand in his own defense, Sheehan said that he served in the Army in the late 1960s, then went to law school and worked nearly 25 years as a public defender. He later started the Center for Justice in Spokane, which handles civil rights, environmental and government watchdog cases.

Before the Iraq war started, he said, he thought the administration was lying about weapons of mass destruction and any connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

“People sending our young boys and girls to Iraq didn’t go to Vietnam when they had a chance (in the 1960s), but they will send my son or my daughter, or your son or your daughter,” he said.

Under questioning from Copeland Gross, Sheehan admitted protesters planned all along to refuse requests to leave the recruiting office unless the governor was called.

“If they didn’t do it, I was going to stay until they did,” he said.

Sheehan tried to convince the jurors that they could make up their own minds about whether the evidence provided reasonable doubt that he was guilty. Previous rulings by Hille didn’t allow him to claim a necessity defense – that the crime he committed was necessary to prevent a worse crime like war – or to bring in international law or the Nuremberg decisions that call for disobeying unjust orders.

But he did come close to the latter at one point: “We can’t just mindlessly do what we’re told, or what do we have? It would seem to me we’d have what the Germans had in the 1930s and 1940s.”

Copeland Gross, however, said the case was pretty simple, because no one disputed that he was asked to leave the building and refused. “This is not a verdict about the political views of the country or the war in Iraq,” she said.

The jury quickly agreed, and Hille handed down a sentence close to what the city requested, even though Sheehan contended it seemed excessive as a way to punish him for taking the case to trial.

Despite facing a day in jail, a $500 fine and some court costs, Sheehan said the day in court was worth it even though the jury didn’t agree with him.

“It wasn’t about whether they agreed with me or not; the important thing is that we get the opportunity to speak,” he said.