SHARPTON - Vieques sentence upheld

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Boston Globe

Judge upholds Sharpton sentence in trespass case

By Fred Kaplan, Globe Staff, 6/15/2001

NEW YORK - A federal judge in Boston yesterday refused to let Al Sharpton out of jail.

Sharpton and three Hispanic political officials were arrested May 1 for trespassing on federal property while protesting the US Navy's live-fire bombing at a test site on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques.

They were sentenced to jail on May 23, Sharpton for 90 days, the others for 40 days. Their lawyers appealed the conviction and the sentence to the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston.

Yesterday, the court denied the appeal and upheld the sentence.

Sharpton, who embarked on a hunger strike shortly after entering a federal detention center in Brooklyn, will stay behind bars until mid-August. The others' sentences end in a couple of weeks.

Coincidentally, the court's rejection came on the day that President Bush said the Navy will shut down the Vieques test site in two years, a move that is being seen as a vindication of the protesters.

NAACP president Kweisi Mfume, who visited the four yesterday, called on President Bush to drop all charges against them. ''Since we have changed the policy with respect to the bombing,'' he said, ''should we not change our policy with respect to these incarcerations?''

Sharpton, the flamboyant minister and civil rights leader who has dominated New York racial protest politics for 15 years, has been gaining a wider following as a result of his protests against the police shooting of West African immigrant Amadou Diallo and, more recently, his protest against slavery in Sudan.

His relatively harsh sentence for civil disobedience on Vieques has given him martyr's status, and has potentially broadened his appeal to the Hispanic community, especially among the nearly 1 million Puerto Ricans who live in New York City.

Even the Republican governor, George E. Pataki, a friend of Bush's from their days at Yale, has been calling for a halt to the bombing since early this spring.

Yesterday Pataki applauded Bush's decision to shut down the test site, but urged him to do so ''today'' rather than 2003.

Lawyers for Sharpton and his three codefendants, who in 1960s fashion have been dubbed the Vieques Four, made several arguments for appeal. They argued that their case was rushed to trial; that their conviction was based on insufficient evidence; that their sentences were ''plainly unreasonable''; that they were denied their choice of counsel; and that the counsel was ineffective.

In an opinion written by US District Judge Jose A. Fuste, the court yesterday rejected those arguments.

The defendants, Fuste wrote, had three weeks to prepare their case. The evidence of trespassing was clear. The sentence fell well within federal guidelines and the court's discretion. The defendants did not move to dismiss their lawyer, who was of their own choosing, until after their motion for a delay was denied. And, by the evidence of their own statements, their lawyer's decision not to put on a defense or to cross-examine government witnesses ''stemmed not from ineffectiveness, but from a strategic choice ... to take `the high road' ... and accept whatever came of their act of conscience.''

The court also said that Sharpton received a heavier sentence than his three codefendants not out of any personal prejudice, but because he was a repeat offender.

Sharpton's three jailmates are prominent officials: State Assemblyman Jose Rivera; City Councilman Adolfo Carrion Jr.; and Bronx Democratic leader Roberto Ramirez.

This story ran on page A3 of the Boston Globe on 6/15/2001. © Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2001


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