Waters
Posted on 03/09/2008 9:30:14 AM PDT by jazusamo
Do the crime, do the time. That’s the rule in this country; there’s no mommy exception. If there were, environmental radical Briana Waters might not be looking at hard time after her conviction in Tacoma on Thursday on two counts of arson.
Waters, a winsome 32-year-old mother, used to a be member of a violent Earth Liberation Front cell known as “The Family.” The Family was into torching other people’s property – including homes – it considered threats to the environment. It did a lot of this.
One of its acts of ecoterror was the burning of the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture in 2001, a crime of exceptional ignorance and irony.
Waters and her partners believed researchers at the center were genetically modifiying trees. In fact, they were merely hybridizing fast-growing populars as an environmentally friendly alternative to logging in forests. The fire also destroyed living specimens of rare and endangered plants. The Family was a gang that couldn’t burn straight.
The University of Washington had to spend $7 million rebuilding the lab, but the research data and plants were gone forever.
In Tacoma’s federal court, prosecutors presented evidence that Waters – a former Evergreen State College student – provided the car and served as the lookout in this strike against the biosphere.
Afterward, Waters went straight, or tried to make it look that way. She cocooned, married, taught violin and gave birth to a daughter who is now 3. She repeatedly referred to her daughter during the trial. Some jurors were sympathetic enough to reject three charges, including one that would have given her at least 30 years. But as a whole, the jury rightly decided that maternity wasn’t a Get Out of Jail Free card.
Waters is reminiscent of other perpetrators of political crimes who went underground and wound up leading conventional and sometimes exemplary lives. A famous example was Katherine Ann Power, an antiwar radical who helped carry out a 1970 bank robbery in which one of her partners killed a Boston police officer.
Power escaped the law, moved to Oregon, married and raised a son. She taught cooking classes at the community college in Albany. In 1993, her conscience and distress led her to turn herself in. Thoroughly repentant, she served six years.
Waters, by contrast, did not turn herself in and has not accepted responsibility for her crimes. In other words, she’s still potentially dangerous.
Waters’ 3-year-old daughter, who will have to be raised by her father, deserves sympathy. Waters herself, not so much. This trial wasn’t about family. It was about The Family.
Populars? I think they mean "poplars."
That said, I agree that maternity is no get-out-of-jail free card. It's a shame that Waters' daughter will spend many years apart from her mother, but both parents should use the time to impress upon the little one why Mommy is in jail and why the things Mommy did were wrong.
Guilty!
The side note to this entire case...the prosecutors likely went to her early on and probably offered various deals to lessen the time in jail or toss charges. At NO point, did she want to deal.
What did the prosecutors want? Names and places of ELF. She knows the structure and the extent of guilt among the Northwest ELF folks. She could have given over a dozen names and connected the dots to several major ELF crimes over the last decade. Throughout this entire process....with her jail time at stake, and her kid....she choose not to negotiate with the prosecutor. The tactic was to make the jury feel sorry for her and just walk away. It almost worked....but she will likely get five hard years in prison...and get twelve months off for good behavior. The prosecutor will likely go to her after six months of prison and offer another deal....which she will turn down.
I’m guessing right now that she is still sitting there in disbelief...and really wanting to dump names badly....but she won’t. Its a great story that someone ought to tell the entire story.
I believe her minimum sentence will be five years and she will serve most all of it because it's a federal case.
She really blew it by not plea bargaining. She was probably the least culpable and only participated in the one arson, it seems.
Here are some of the others sentences:
Stanislas Gregory Meyerhoff - (5-23-07) - 13 years
Kevin Tubbs ----------------- (5-24-07) - 12 years, 7 months
Chelsea Dawn Gerlach ------- (5-25-07) - 9 years
Darren Todd Thurston---------(5-29-07) - 3 years, 1 month
Suzanne Nicole Savoie--------(5-31-07) - 4 years, 3 months
Sarah Kendall Tankersley-----(5-31-07) - 3 years, 10 months
Joyanna Lynn Zacher---------(6-01-07) - 7 years, 8 months
Nathan Fraser Block----------(6-01-07) - 7 years, 8 months
Daniel Gerard McGowan-----(6-04-07) - 7 years
Jonathan Paul-----------------(8-01-07) - 4 years, 3 months
An older article in the Eugene Weekly News with pics and some background.
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Hippies. They’re everywhere. They wanna save the earth, but all they do is smoke pot and smell bad.
Eric Cartman
I hate hippies! I mean, the way they always talk about ‘protectin’ the earth’ and then drive around in cars that get poor gas mileage and wear those stupid bracelets - I hate ‘em! I wanna kick ‘em in the nuts!
Eric Cartman
Agree...I believe some of her marxist professors at Evergreen State College in Olympia convinced her that what she would do was absolutely right but she’s the one going to prison.
It’s very sad about the little girl, she’s got a strike against her already. Hopefully the Dad realizes it and does the right thing with her.
Yes it is very sad for the little girl. I wonder if the dad knew what his wife was up to? Maybe he can move on & find a new life...Prayers for both of them
That’s awesome. Boy, I wouldn’t go to jail and leave my CHILD to protect some other perp. I bet she’ll start to wonder about her loyalty to hairballs at some point, too.
Yes indeed, Evergreen State College is a major “academic” Marxist toilet, a curse upon civilization.
screw this bee-atch...just because she is pregnant is no excuse....of course with lib/dems ~ a male would get the same sympathies!!!
And yes you arrest the Piano Player. They usually know more about
whats going on then the whores themselves.
My personal experience with these liberal "activists," is that they are utterly bereft of even the most minimal insight. They are incapable of a simple rational discussion.
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