Coronado terrorism trial begins

The trial of animal-rights activist Rod Coronado got underway Tuesday in San Diego. Coronado was charged with a decade-old law prohibiting people from demonstrating how to make an explosive device with the intent to incite others to commit violence.

The case stems from a talk Coronado gave in Hillcrest on Aug. 1, 2003, about 15 hours after arsonists burned an under-construction University City condo complex to the ground and left a banner that said the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) was responsible. Coronado did more than four years in prison for destroying buildings and equipment at numerous fur farms in the early 1990s, and he served as a spokesperson for various militant environmentalist groups, including ELF.

Authorities haven’t charged anyone in the arson case. Coronado wasn’t arrested until February 2006, two-and-a-half years after his talk. An in-depth feature story about Coronado and his case that CityBeat published a few months ago explores the importance of the case in our post-9/11 world. Prosecutors would seem to have the burden of proving that Coronado’s intent was to spark a terrorist act. Much will hinge on the judge’s instructions to the jury.

Prosecutors began their case today by first establishing the facts of the arson and then setting the scene of Coronado’s speech. San Diego Police Detective Joe Lehr testified that he attended the event undercover and witnessed Coronado telling his audience how to make the type of incendiary device he used to set a fur farm ablaze.

During a Q&A session after Coronado’s talk, Lehr said, “a woman shouted out, ‘How do I make a bomb?’” Using a jug of apple juice and a VHS tape provided to him by prosecutors, Lehr then demonstrated for the jury how Coronado used two similar objects to show his audience how he’d done it. The tape was a stand-in for a sponge, a component of a homemade explosive. Lehr recalled that Coronado had said that night that he wouldn’t be surprised if such a device was found at the scene of the fire in University City.

Coronado has acknowledged showing how the device is made, but he didn’t intend to incite a criminal act.

Prosecutors played for the jury a videotape of Coronado’s appearance. The video captured an hour’s worth of the speech—in which Coronado discussed his Native American philosophy on respect for animals and his efforts to protect whales, foxes, bobcats and the like—but cuts off before the end of Coronado’s prepared remarks, so there is no visual evidence of his answer to the woman’s question.

Famed San Francisco-based civil-rights attorney Tony Serra, representing Coronado, began his cross-examination of Lehr near the end of the day, focusing on when Lehr made his notes from the talk and when he transferred them to his official report. Lehr said he made notes from memory after the event while sitting in his car on Utah Street, where post-event surveillance of Coronado took him. He used the notes to write his report five days later.

Serra continues his cross-examination of Lehr Wednesday morning. The prosecution expects to wrap up its case by Wednesday afternoon. Coronado’s lawyers will begin their defense Thursday morning.

After a lunch break Tuesday, prosecutor Mike Skerlos told Judge Jeffrey Miller that the defense had held a press conference during the break, in apparent defiance of Miller’s request that the parties not discuss the facts of the case with the media. Miller was annoyed.

“This is really disappointing,” he admonished the defense team, saying their gathering with reporters went “beyond the beyond.”

No harm, no foul, though—he asked jurors if they’d witnessed or heard the press session, and each said no.