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PREVENTIVE DETENTION: PREVENTION of HUMAN RIGHTS? Laura Whitehorn

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PREVENTIVE DETENTION: PREVENTION of HUMAN RIGHTS? Laura Whitehorn View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository Yale Journal of Law and Liberation Volume 2 Issue 1 YALE JOURNAL OF LAW AND Article 4 LIBERATION 1991 PREVENTIVE DETENTION: PREVENTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS? Laura Whitehorn Alan Berkman Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yjll Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Laura Whitehorn & Alan Berkman, PREVENTIVE DETENTION: PREVENTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS?, 2 Yale J. L. & Liberation (1991). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yjll/vol2/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Yale Journal of Law and Liberation by an authorized editor of Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Whitehorn and Berkman: PREVENTIVE DETENTION: PREVENTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS? PREVENTIVE DETENTION. PREVENTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS? By Laura Whitehorn with Alan Berkman* Justice Rehnquist: "In our society liberty is the norm and detention without trial is the carefully limited excep- tion .. ." Justice Rehnquist's words describe an ideal that * Laura Whitehorn and Alan Berkman are two of the six many of us would like to believe is an integral part of the political prisoners who are co-defendants in the Resistance U.S. system of laws. Ironically, his pronouncement is Conspiracy Case (U.S. v. Whitehorn et al., 710 F.Supp. 803, from a 1987 Supreme Court decision that upheld the con- D.D.C. 1989). The others are Susan Rosenberg, Marilyn Buck, stitutionality of preventive detention and thereby guaran- Linda Evans, and Timothy Blunk. The six were indicted in teed that the gap between the ideal and the reality of the May, 1988, for conspiracy to "influence change, and protest criminal justice system would widen. policies and practices of the U.S. government concerning vari- ous international and domestic matters through the use of His words have given me little comfort during the violent and illegal means," and with carrying out a series of five and a half years that I've spent in jail. Only one year bombings against U.S. government and military targets, includ- was a result of a conviction; the rest of the time, I've ing the Capitol building following the invasion of Grenada and been held in preventive detention awaiting trial. the shelling of Lebanon in 1983. According to Whitehom and Berkman, these actions constituted one part of the broader Being a "carefully limited exception" hasn't made it movements resisting racism, colonialism, and intervention in easier to be awakened at 4:30 every morning by clanging Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and Puerto Rico. metal gates, sometimes accompanied by a hostile correc- The message of the bombings was that the U.S. government's tional officer (guard) yelling, "Hurry up, no talking; denial of the right of oppressed nations to self-determination you're not at McDonald's, you're in jail." must be exposed and fought. The Resistance Conspiracy case was settled recently when I know I'm in jail. I've known it since May, 1985, Whitehorn, Buck, and Evans each entered a plea of guilty to when I was arrested in a Baltimore apartment by the FBI. the conspiracy count and to the count charging the Capitol They were searching for a group of revolutionaries, some bombing; in exchange, all charges were dismissed against of whom had been fugitives for a number of years. Al- Berkman, Blunk, and Rosenberg, and the three remaining charges against Whitehorn, Buck, and Evans were also dis- though I was not a fugitive and had no outstanding charg- missed. As part of the agreement, Whitehomr also pled guilty es, I was immediately placed under arrest. to one count of manufacturing false identification from her My initial charge was assault on an FBI agent - a 1985 Baltimore indictment. All except Whitehorn are already charge so blatantly false that even the magistrate who serving long sentences. arraigned me questioned its veracity. That didn't stop the One motivation for the plea agreement, according to the defendants, was the fact that Alan Berkman is suffering a U.S. Attorney from asking that I be held in preventive recurrence of Hodgkin's Disease (lymphatic cancer). Due to a detention, and it didn't deter the magistrate from granting combination of the inadequate health care afforded all prison- her request.2 In theory, the government has the burden of ers, and the particular attacks on political prisoners, the normal showing that bail should be denied; in practice, magis- dangers of chemotherapy have been exacerbated in Berkman's trates and judges routinely grant such requests - case. He has been near death several times since the start of and de- treatment in May, 1990. A campaign for immediate release on fendants have the new burden of proving why they should parole is underway-Berkman has been eligible for parole be granted bail. since 1987-and individuals and organizations are urged to participate. For information, please contact the Emergency Committee for Political Prisoners' Rights, Box 28191, Wash- ington, DC 20038, (202) 328-7818. All but one of the Resistance Conspiracy Six were held Hodgkin's Disease for the first time. in preventive detention following their arrests in 1984-85. Alan 1. US. v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739 (1987). Berkman was held in preventive detention in Philadelphia for 2. Hearing, (D.Md. May 14, 1985), Magistrate Paul M. two years (1985-87) and denied bail even when he developed Rosenberg. Published by Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository, 1991 1 Yale Journal of Law and Liberation, Vol. 2 [1991], Iss. 1, Art. 4 Law and Liberation Over the next few months, the prosecutor added in 1984-85, and they are now serving outrageously long charges of possession of two guns and false identification sentences on charges that, in any other case, would have which had been found in the apartment in which I'd been resulted in significantly less time. Alan Berkman is serv- arrested, and preventive detention was re-affirmed. ing 12 years; Tim Blunk, 58 years; Marilyn Buck, 70 Under the Bail Reform Act of 19843 (the act that years; Linda Evans, 35 years; and Susan Rosenberg, 58 approved the use of preventive detention in Federal cases), years. It seems that "carefully limited exceptions" both to the prosecutor can request preventive detention only if a normal sentencing procedures, and to bail, have been crime of violence is involved. In my case, the unproven carved out for political prisoners. and contrived assault charge served as the requisite violent Because of this new charge, I had a new bail hear- act. ing in D.C., even though I was still being held in preven- The prosecutor also had to prove to the judge's sat- tive detention in Baltimore. Here, too, I was ordered to be 6 isfaction that I was either a "threat to the community" or held in preventive detention , and the Baltimore charges could not be prevented from fleeing by "any conditions or were held in abeyance by the Justice Department, which set of conditions." To establish my "dangerousness," the was presumably waiting to see the outcome of the D.C. U.S. Attorney cited my record of three prior arrests. trial. It was true. I had been arrested before. Since the In April, 1989, the D.C. trial judge dismissed the 1960's when I became involved as a college student with charges against three of my co-defendants for double the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, I've jeopardy, and the government appealed. Because the ap- been active in a broad range of human rights and social peal could take up to a year to be resolved, I again re- justice issues. I've picketed, protested, demonstrated, and quested bail. This time, the judge ruled that detention for defended myself and others when we've been attacked by more than a year would violate due process and ordered the police. In 1969, I was arrested three times in anti-war my release on the same bail conditions that the Baltimore 7 demonstrations. None of the arrests was serious enough to courts had rejected. result in a prison sentence. I was released on bail in each Again, the Baltimore courts rejected those conditions, case and appeared for all court dates. I violated none of continuing the preventive detention. Same defendant, es- the conditions of release. I successfully completed two sentially the same potential prison time in both cases, years of unsupervised probation. same bail conditions-yet there are two diametrically Nevertheless, the magistrate decided that I should be opposed decisions. held in preventive detention. The fact that my father was I remain in jail serving an inordinately long sentence, willing to offer his home for bail and to supervise my having been neither tried nor convicted. Ironically, I've release did not seem to matter. now served more time in preventive detention than I At a later hearing, the judge articulated his own could have received as the maximum sentence on the carefully sculpted exception to the right to bail: I should initial assault charge. That charge carries a maximum be denied bail, he said, because I had stated in court that penalty of three years; I have now spent five and a half "I live by revolutionary and human principles."4 Appar- years in jail. ently, it did not occur to him that when you make excep- I've been detained far longer than KKK leader Don tions - no matter how "carefully limited" - to a funda- Black who was imprisoned for two years after he was mental right, the exceptions end up destroying the right convicted for stockpiling massive quantities of automatic and replacing it with a privilege.
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