Earth First! protesters’ trial continues Tuesday

FARMINGTON – In a jury trial held today, two people facing a misdemeanor charge of failing to disperse testified there was no advanced planning of the event and no specific warning given by officers to disperse in connection with a protest last summer that included stopping a semi-truck carrying a 140-foot wind turbine blade to the Kibby Wind Power Project and a woman locking herself to the undercarriage of a tractor trailer.

At the beginning of the day in court, two women and one man each faced a misdemeanor charge of failure to disperse and a third woman was charged with misdemeanor criminal trespass. The four who participated in the Earth First! protests were arrested following the July 6, 2010 blockade of a tractor trailer carrying a turbine blade near a rest area on Route 27 just south of the Kibby Mountain wind power project.

In a negotiated plea agreement before the jury trial started, two of the four people charged entered pleas to a misdemeanor charge of failure to disperse. Ana Rodriguez, 30, of Florida and Courtney Butcher, 26, of Minnesota, both represented by attorney Barbara Chassie, entered their pleas by authorization because they remained in their respective states.

Rodriguez pleaded guilty to the Class E failure to disperse, agreeing to a 12-month deferred disposition in which she is to complete 50 hours of community service and refrain from further criminal conduct. If successful, the charge will be dismissed a year from now.

Butcher pleaded no contest to the charge of Class E failure to disperse and received a $100 fine plus $60 in court fees. Chassie said afterward the “state made a generous offer” to her clients which resulted in not having to go to trial. “But it doesn’t reflect their lack of commitment,” she added. Butcher couldn’t be present because she had a job interview and Rodriguez said she was very willing to do the 50 hours of community service because “her life is community service.”

Willow Cordes-Eklund, 27, of Minneapolis, Minn., and Erik Gillard, 27, of Montpelier, Vermont, opted to have a jury decide their cases. A Franklin County jury of seven women, five men with one alternate, first heard testimony from three State Police troopers, a U.S. Border Patrol agent and viewed three videos of the blockade supplied by police cruisers and the group Earth First! at the scene.

Trooper Peter Michaud testified that he read a pre-written order over the cruiser’s public address system, telling the crowd of about 50 protesters to “leave these premises” and giving them “10 minutes to disperse” from the Gold Brook Road, which Plum Creek owns, cross to the other side of Route 27 and to “not obstruct the roadway” or they would be arrested.

Everyone who testified agreed all of the protesters did comply with the order, except one woman, Butcher, who refused to leave and sat in the Gold Brook Road intersection. She was arrested and charged with failure to disperse.

Eklund said she arrived at Gold Brook Road as the protesters were leaving and didn’t hear Michaud’s order to disperse. Gillard said he heard the order and left. The two testified they and many of the other protesters decided to go swimming at the Sarampus Falls rest area a few miles south on Route 27. It was there, Gillard said, he “saw a caravan approach and saw people walk into the road to stop the truck.” Under questioning from Assistant District Attorney James Andrews, Gillard said he approached the truck’s driver while he was still in the cab by stepping up on the running board.

“I put my hands on the window and I wanted to tell him to turn off the truck. I wanted to protect the lives of the people in the road,” Gillard said. Next, he said, he was grabbed and pulled down off the truck. “I was focused on de-escalating the situation,” he explained.

John Crosby, Jr., a U.S. Border Patrol officer, said he arrived on the scene to see people walking down the middle of the road blocking traffic. He said he saw a man he later identified as Gillard “walking then in a dead sprint jumped up to the cab of the truck,” Crosby said. “I took him off the truck; he seemed like he was trying to take control of the truck by reaching inside.” Crosby pulled Gillard off the truck, tackled him to the ground, handcuffed him and told him he was under arrest.

Both Eklund and Gillard denied knowing  the tractor trailer carrying a turbine blade was going to come and that there were any protest plans to stop it. Eklund testified when she heard a truck coming she went towards the road from the rest area. On her way towards the road she saw two bike locks sitting on a pile of bags and picked the locks up. She denied owning the locks under cross examination.

Trooper Timothy Black, who was the lead cruiser escort of the tractor trailer, said he told the group of people in the middle of the road to stay back. From his cruiser’s video, Black can be heard saying to the approaching protesters: “stay back or you’re going to jail” and “stop right there,” don’t move” three or four times. He said he tackled a protester he identified in court as Eklund because she kept trying to approach the truck’s cab. “Do not move” can be heard on the video.

The protesters seemed comply, Black said, but then Eklund managed to get past the officers and under the truck. “I made the decision to go under the truck,” Eklund admitted. She described how she used the two bike locks she found; one flexible, in which she wound around the support beam under the trailer. The other, a U-lock, “I put in the loop, then around my neck and secured it,” Eklund told the jury. She denied ever hearing Michaud’s announcement to disperse, either at Gold Brook or at the Sarampus Falls site, as he had testified.

State Police Sgt. Robert Charette said he crawled under the trailer and asked Eklund if she would leave.  “She said, ‘I can’t because I’m locked.’ I asked if she had the key and she said, ‘no.'” A pair of bolt cutters was brought to the scene and the cable bike lock was cut, then she was handcuffed and arrested.

Under questioning by Andrews, Eklund said she had been prepared to be arrested, but denied, as Gillard did, that the blockade and attaching herself to the trailer had been pre-planned by the Earth First! group.

Eklund said she did it “to bring attention and protest further development” and she “wanted to protect Sisk Mountain from development.” Andrews asked her why she didn’t stand on the side of the road with a sign to protest that would have been legally acceptable.

“I needed a more serious, more impactful statement,” she said. She explained to the jury that she went with a “hard” road block tactic of civil disobedience, as opposed to “soft” road block in which people just stand by. “It was one step beyond that,” she said of chaining herself to the trailer, then added, “It was the sexiness of the moment.”

Gillard’s attorney, Lynne Williams, said in her opening statement that “failure to disperse” when given as a lawful order would constitute a failure to disperse verdict. “Running towards a truck and climbing on the running board with law enforcement saying ‘stop’ is no order to disperse.” She added that six of more people engaging in disorderly conduct, a lawful order to disperse and a failure to disperse need to take place for a guilty verdict.

Andrews told jurors that the protesters’ failure to disperse and “to engage with others to cause disorderly conduct” is evident when the protesters obstructed a public road, refused a police order to disperse, chained themselves to a private vehicle and attempted to enter the private vehicle.

“It was a concerted, planned, joint effort,” Andrews said and later added, “It was a failure to disperse; to get away from the truck that was a violation of law.”

“Did they commit a failure to disperse,” Eklund’s attorney Philip Worden asked the jurors in his opening statement. “They need an order to disperse. When was an order given?” And he questioned, “Was there a course of disorderly conduct by at least six people? If not, an order to disperse can’t be given,” he said. Finally, he questioned if their words or actions constituted the first amendment right of political speech and not disorderly conduct. “There’s a fine line; did they cross it?” Worden asked jurors.

Jurors return Tuesday to hear closing arguments and the judge’s instructions before deliberating.