Our Morning Before the Supreme Court

September 23, 2008 | 3 Comments

Let’s just say it was a bad day to be Bob Butterfield, the state’s attorney from Caledonia County. Because it was Butterfield’s job to go toe-to-toe with the entirety of the Vermont Supreme Court and a genuine legal eagle by the name of David Sleigh. Ouch.

Butterfield, you see, is the prosecutor who has dug in his legal heels and continued with the rather absurd prosecution of yours truly and my trusty accomplice in acts of civil disobedience, Boots Wardinksi. And David Sleigh is our attorney, a first amendment champion who stepped up to take on our case at no cost to us because, as he said, the charges didn’t pass the laugh test.

The case in question goes back to that June day in 2006 when Boots and I, armed with nothing but a couple of tickets to enter, attended the high school graduation ceremony of the St. Johnsbury Academy. The draw for us was the invited speaker, none other than John Negroponte, a man of seemingly infinite acts of horror against the people of Central America during the Reagan Administration and one of the chief architects of the Iraq War during the current Bush Administration. At the time of Negroponte’s visit to St. Johnsbury, he was officially serving as the Bush Administration’s “Intelligence Czar.” And, interestingly enough, we were in the minority at the time when it came to the belly laughs created by that title — and that title alone. Now, of course, it’s an all-too-easy joke.

Make no mistake about it, we weren’t going to let the one and only opportunity to confront a Bush war architect slip away. Because, let’s remember, Vermont is the only state in the nation that Bush himself has not visited during his nearly eight years in office, and Negroponte’s trip to the state is still the only trip by such a high-ranking, Bush-appointed war criminal. And, frankly, we didn’t have much interest in a candlelight vigil.

So confrontation it was – all seventeen seconds of it.

Only moments into Negroponte’s address, I got out of my seat to make my objections to Negroponte’s presence known. According to the court documents, I specifically had this to say:

“In the name of democracy I object to this man speaking. He has blood on his hands from his work in Central America and Iraq. He shouldn’t be at the podium, he should be in jail. He is a war criminal.”

But, technically, the last half of that statement was delivered with a bevy of federal, state and local security officials swarming me, handcuffing me and leading me out of the packed auditorium.

And then Negroponte tried to continue his speech by saying, “Now it’s my turn.”

To which, Boots began this interjection:

“No! It’s my turn! When the headmaster introduced Negroponte, he forgot to tell about all the people tortured, killed and raped (under Negroponte’s helm in Honduras). You should be ashamed to stay in here and listen to this man.”

We were both charged with trespassing and “attempted disorderly conduct.” On the advice of Sleigh, I entered a plea of “no contest” with the promise from him that we’d challenge the entirety of the case before the Vermont Supreme Court.

Boots, however, was Boots and demanded a jury trial. But on the day the trial was to start, the presiding judge ruled that a motion filed by Sleigh regarding the overall legality of the charges had to be reviewed by the Supreme Court before the trial could proceed.

Alas, our cases were joined again — which leads to today’s hearing, in which Butterfield stuttered and stammered to try to make sense out of the senseless.

In the 30-minutes worth of legal back and forth this morning, the court seemed perplexed by Butterfield’s assertion that our 17-seconds worth of objections in a four-hour ceremony resulted in a prosecutable disruption. Instead, they seemed to be agreeing with Sleigh’s reasoning that we were simply exercising our First Amendment right to speak. We did, after all, stop when we were told to stop – nice boys that we are and all.

Sleigh even dutifully informed the court that Negroponte’s address centered on the theme of encouraging the students to “raise your voices.” And when Chief Justice Paul Reiber asked if we objected to that theme, Sleigh quickly retorted that his clients had “no objection” to that message (and the courtroom chuckles ensued).

But the best questions came from Justice Marilyn Skoglund, who seemed absolutely baffled by Butterfield’s steadfast assertion that our 17-second objections were illegal. Skoglund asked Butterfield, for example, if she would have been arrested if she was attending and stood up to congratulate a family member for their graduation feat. It would, after all, be a “disruption.”

It’s all about “intent,” replied Butterfield, who was totally unable to ascribe any intent on our part other than to venture into the land of make-believe and declare that “had the authorities not succeeded [in arresting us], their disruptions would have been further.”

In other words: Facts be damned, because we were now entering the realm of Butterfield’s fertile imagination.

Here, Mr. Butterfield, let me fill in the gaps in your logic: Our intent was to object to John Negroponte speaking in our state. Period. We stated our objections and we were arrested for doing so. End of story.

And it was nice to see Vermont’s Supreme Court see through the nonsense of Butterfield’s arguments. Now let’s hope its ruling – expected within 60 days — will lead to an instant dismissal of any and all charges against us.

Because the American people must fight for the right to object.

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog, essays & columns