Posted on 09/16/2003 7:31:09 AM PDT by Valin
WASHINGTON - A tractor-driving North Carolina farmer whose one-man protest of federal farm policy last spring created enormous traffic jams around the capital is defending himself in court.
Dwight Watson, 50, who drove his tractor into a pond on the National Mall and sat there for two days while police sharpshooters kept him in their sights, is charged with making a false threat to use explosives and destroying government property. No explosives were found, although a practice grenade incapable of detonating was found inside the cab of Watson's tractor after he surrendered.
Watson's trial in U.S. District Court was scheduled to begin with jury selection Tuesday.
It was March 17 when Watson drove a John Deere pulling a flatbed trailer and Jeep into a small park located near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Washington Monument. Watson said he was protesting changes in federal policy that he said vilified the tobacco industry and brought his family to financial ruin.
He stayed put until March 19. As he sat, authorities closed several major roads in the area, which resulted in massive rush-hour gridlock on both days, including on Washington's major feeder route into the northern Virginia suburbs.
The incident led many to wonder how the nation's capital would handle an evacuation after a terrorist attack if a man on a tractor tied up traffic for two days.
U.S. Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers, whose agency has jurisdiction over the National Mall, has repeatedly defended her department's handling of the incident. Watson was allowed to sleep, use his cell phone to call news organizations and negotiate with police for 48 hours.
Chambers has said she would rather face those criticisms than talk about the loss of human life, and Watson had threatened to use explosives.
According to the indictment, Watson caused $27,000 worth of damage when he used his tractor to dig up part of an island in the pond and a retaining wall surrounding it.
Watson, of Whitakers, N.C., has been in prison awaiting trial since he was arrested peacefully at the end of the standoff. If convicted, he would face a maximum prison sentence of 10 years on each of the two counts.
Watson will act as his own lawyer but will have a real lawyer present to advise him, at the insistence of U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office expected the trial to last up to one week.
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