News from stpatricksfour.org: Clare Grady Sentenced

“As a mother who knows the preciousness of children, not just mine - but all children - I want the court to understand that before we walked into the recruiting station [March 17, 2003] a million people had already died in Iraq from U.S. imposed sanctions, half of them children,” said Clare Grady as she testified at her sentencing Wednesday in Binghamton federal court.

Grady was sentenced to six months of federal prison and ordered to pay her share of restitution for participating in a symbolic act of non-violent resistance at a military recruiting station outside Ithaca, NY on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Grady’s two daughters, Leah Grady-Sayvetz, 16, and Teresa Rose Grady-Sayvetz, 14, stood in the court gallery as their mother spoke, “We are raising our children to love God and one another. Not to kill or cooperate with killing. To know that law is here to uphold life and not the other way around. We would like to teach our children to act from their conscience, responsibly, and for the greater good.”

Last September, a federal jury found Clare Grady, Danny Burns, Teresa Grady and Peter DeMott, (known as the St. Patrick’s Four) not guilty of federal conspiracy charges, but guilty on the misdemeanor counts held against them. The federal case was the second time the Four had been tried for the same incident. Their state level trial ended in a mistrial when the jury could not come to a decision, splitting their vote nine to three in favor of the defendants. The federal prosecutor picked up the case after it was brought to their attention by former Tompkins County District Attorney, George Dentes.

During the federal trial last fall, Grady informed the jury about her travel to Iraq before the war in 2002. She had met with a group of Iraqi mothers during the trip and spoke with them through an interpreter. After the women described the hardships of living under U.S. sanctions, they asked Grady about her own children. When she showed them a picture of her two daughters, the Iraqi women kissed the each of the girls in the photo before handing it back to her. Grady then asked the jury to consider “the love that’s necessary to make that bridge.”

The encounter with the Iraqi women was what drove Grady to carry photographs of mothers and children to the recruiting station during the act of civil disobedience that ultimately brought her, almost three years later, into federal court in Binghamton, NY. When Grady attempted to enter the photos as evidence for the jury during her federal trial, the judge denied her submission. But today in court, Judge McAvoy accepted a packet of 102 photographs with the names and ages of New York State military who had died in Iraq from Grady.

Judge Thomas J. McAvoy stated this morning that he feared anarchy would ensue if others followed Grady’s example. Prior to pronouncing the court’s sentence on her the judge emphasized his duty to protect the public from Grady’s unlawful actions.

Grady said, “I go to jail as part of the public discourse about the war in Iraq.”

Paul Sayvets, Clare Grady’s husband, was joined by dozens of his wife’s supporters today. Before being handcuffed, Grady blew kisses to the crowd of family and friends assembled in the courtroom.

Katie Quinn-Jacobs is a freelance writer living in Ithaca, NY. For more information on the St. Patrick’s Four, see www.stpatricksfour.org