I see that Vietnam Vet Peter DeMott, one of the St Patrick's Day Four, was sentenced yesterday in the Binghamton federal court for an act of non-violent civil disobedience he took with three other activists (Daniel Burns, Clare Grady, Teresa Grady) on March 17, 2003. Judge McAvoy sentenced DeMott to 4 months in federal prison and 4 months in community confinement.

It's interesting that the judge ruled that neither the "Nurembeg excuse" nor the US Consitution could be mentioned in the court case. By doing so, he basically eliminated the legal grounds that the jury needed for full acquittal in their case.

At the Nuremberg Tribunal, the majority of the defendants claimed they were unknowing pawns of Adolf Hitler or were simply following orders. That excuse was deemed to be unacceptable, and no excuse for genocide. Evidence in the Nuremberg court room included the shrunken head of a concentration camp inmate and tattooed human skin from concentration camp inmates used to make lampshades and other household articles.

The Nuremberg excuse has been a moral standard for citizens who feel unable to comply with orders from their governments that require them to commit human rights violations. Today, the war against terror is the excuse for this breakdown of human principles.

By jailing someone for demonstrating against the political actions of it's government, and by making an order that the US constitution could not be mentioned, the judge was basically enforcing compliance with government policy over moral obligations. He was putting the state before the law.

By the way, at his sentencing yesterday, Peter DeMott began his opening remarks by asking the court for a moment of silence to remember the dead who had perished in Iraq: both the American and Iraqi casualties. DeMott noted that thirty percent of the Iraqi dead are children. Judge Thomas J. McAvoy granted this request stating, "The Court will join you in a moment of silence because it is a good thing to do. I feel that loss deeply."

What does the Constitution of a country mean if a federal judge have the right to overrule it?

And in a country where the government is being accused of lies, atrocities and corruption, is the Nurembeg excuse no longer relevant?


jus'wondering..

freda