nuclear-news

Ignation Solidarity Network, BY ISN STAFF | October 22, 2020  Father Steve Kelly, S.J., a 71-year-old Jesuit priest and member of the nonviolent civil disobedience group that came to be known as the “Kings Bay Plowshares 7,” was sentenced by a U.S. District Court judge to 33 months in jail, three years’ probation and restitution fees on October 15. Due to the fact that Fr. Kelly already served 30 months and under federal law is owed 54 days a year of “good time credit,” his sentencing, in essence, discontinued his incarceration in a federal prison facility.

The sentence stems from April 4, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., when Fr. Kelly and six other Catholic activists, all lay people—Mark Colville, Clare Grady, Martha Hennessy, Elizabeth McAlister, Patrick O’Neill, and Carmen Trotta—set out late at night to practice their faith and witness for peace among the people working with nuclear weapons inside the U.S. Navy Kings Bay nuclear submarine base on the south Georgia coast. Once inside, they split into three groups to hang banners, pour blood, spraypaint religious sayings, block off an administrative building with crime scene tape, and hammer on replicas of the nuclear missiles deployed on the Trident submarines based at Kings Bay.

The declaration of a National Emergency in mid-March led federal courts around the country to curtail business and restrict access. In southeast Georgia, the federal court put most proceedings on hold, first until April 17 and later through the end of May, further delaying the sentencing of the seven.

Following a three-day jury trial in October 2019, the seven were convicted of misdemeanor trespass and three felonies: the destruction of government property, depredation of government property on a military installation, and a conspiracy to do these things.

Fr. Kelly was returned to the Glynn County Detention Center following the trial. Release on bail was unavailable to Fr. Kelly due to his unresolved federal probation violation from an earlier disarmament action in Washington state. When the group was convicted, the court had set forth a clear timeline for the completion of pre-sentencing reports in anticipation of sentencing last winter. Those deadlines slipped by as draft reports for each of the defendants were prepared………….

In reflecting on the April 4, 2018, action, Fr. Kelly said: “In order to use my limited time, I will, along with others, try to embody the vision given to us through the prophet Isaiah. It is a conversion of weapons to devices for human production. The gift of Isaiah 2:4 is an economic, political, and moral conversion of the violence of nuclear annihilation. With others, I hope to be instruments in God’s hands for showing a way out of the escalation, the proliferation of this scourge of humanity. I feel strongly that Martin Luther King, Jr., would agree with the principle I attribute to Gandhi that we cannot be fully human while one nuclear weapon exists.”

[Kings Bay Plowshares 7, Religion News Service] https://ignatiansolidarity.net/blog/2020/10/22/jesuit-fr-steve-kelly-sentenced-for-nonviolent-civil-disobedience-at-u-s-nuclear-weapon-facility/