Last Blog On Earth

The judge in the Rod Coronado trial gave the defense a significant victory Wednesday when he signaled his intent to tell jurors that they must find that when Coronado spoke to a Hillcrest audience four years ago, he not only meant to teach them step-by-step how to commit arson but also that arson was “imminent” and “likely” to occur because of Coronado’s words.

“The rubber meets the road, I think, when it comes to jury instructions,” Judge Jeffrey Miller said. The jury gets its instructions before beginning its deliberations, which could start Friday or Monday.

Coronado, an uncompromising animal-rights activist who was imprisoned for four years in the late 1990s after being convicted of destroying a fur farm, was arrested again in February 2006 under a 10-year-old federal law aimed at combating domestic terrorism.

Coronado’s lawyers had unsuccessfully asked Miller to rule that the law unconstitutionally violates the right to free speech, but Miller, citing case law, sought to set the legal bar high for federal prosecutors.

The law in the Coronado case says: “It shall be unlawful for any person to teach or demonstrate the making or use of an explosive, a destructive device, or a weapon of mass destruction, or to distribute by any means information pertaining to, in whole or in part, the manufacture or use of an explosive, destructive device, or weapon of mass destruction, with the intent that the teaching, demonstration, or information be used for, or in furtherance of, an activity that constitutes a federal crime of violence.”

Miller plans to tell the jury that it must also find that “at the time of any such teaching or demonstration, both the intent of the defendant and the tendencies of his words or demonstration were to produce an imminent federal crime of violence, one likely to occur.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Skerlos argued that the language of the law is sufficient, and he worried aloud that the word “imminent” might make it difficult to prosecute Coronado for the crime. He argued that Coronado intended to teach people how to burn down buildings with the expectation that someone would follow in his footsteps, which, as he sees it, is a federal crime.

Skerlos asked Miller for further indulgence, requesting permission to submit additional written arguments Wednesday evening in hopes of changing the judge’s mind. Miller agreed but appeared to have his mind made up. He told Skerlos that he doesn’t believe his ruling scuttles the government’s case.

But Miller seemed to suggest that the jury should do the heavy lifting. “Imminence has not really been defined by the courts,” he said.

During a break, one of Coronado’s attorneys, Gerry Singleton, told another, Ben Rosenfeld, that he’d like to ask Miller to go a step further and define “imminent.”

In the presence of the jury Wednesday, prosecutors laid a foundation for proving intent, showing jurors a video of Coronado giving a speech at American University in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 26, 2003, a little less than six months before his talk in Hillcrest. At American University, Coronado advocated for sabotage against corporations profiting from violence against animals or the environment; there, too, he demonstrated assemblage of a homemade fire starter. Prosecutors also read for the jury documents, written by Coronado and seized by investigators from Coronado’s Tucson, Ariz., home, that added to the portrayal of Coronado as an articulate, passionate militant. In the speeches and letters, he referred to action-oriented activists as “warriors” in defense of the Earth and its powerless inhabitants, and he chided mainstream environmentalists as being part of the problem. He has since come out against violence against private property as a means to an end.

Brian Grove, a fire-protection engineer for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, provided expert testimony on how makeshift incendiary devices work, narrating videos depicting the bureau’s lab tests of the devices described by Coronado: incense sticks burning down to fuel-soaked sponges affixed to fuel-filled milk jugs. (The incense is the delay; the sponge is the igniter that melts the jug, spilling the fuel and spreading the fire.)

Read the previous post on the trial.