KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — An 83-year-old Catholic nun and two of her fellow peace activists were found guilty Wednesday of intending to injure the national defense for intruding last July onto the Y-12 National Security Complex, a nuclear weapons production facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
After hearing two days of testimony and arguments, and then deliberating for nearly 2½ hours, the jury also found the defendants guilty of damaging more than $1,000 of government property at the Y-12 site, where they cut through four chain-link fences and spray-painted biblical messages on a building that warehouses an estimated 400 tons of highly enriched uranium, the radioactive material used to fuel a nuclear bomb.
During the trial about 100 spectators filled two courtrooms to support Sister Megan Rice and 64-year-old Vietnam veteran Michael Walli, both of whom live in the District, and Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, a house painter who lives in Duluth, Minn.
As the jury of nine men and three women left the courtroom, supporters sang softly: “Love, love, love, love. People, we are made for love.”
In the pre-dawn hours of July 28, 2012, the three defendants hiked over a wooded ridge and were able to enter the site unimpeded because of a series of deficient security measures, including inoperable security cameras and an alarm system inundated by routine false alarms. The intrusion triggered a two-week shutdown of operations at Y-12 — a Department of Energy site that is overseen by the National Nuclear Security Administration and operated and managed by private contractors — and prompted four congressional hearings on nuclear security and a shake up in the U.S. nuclear security enterprise.
After the verdict the defendants were taken into custody and a hearing was scheduled for Thursday morning to determine the merits of detention. Sentencing will be held at a later date. Together, the two felonies carry a maximum 30 years in prison.
For more on the defendants, the intrusion and the fallout, visit wapo.st/prophets.
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