"Olympia 22" case ends in mistrial; reveals surveillance of activists

topic : Port Militarization Resistance | Port of Olympia

Trial for the remaining 17 defendants of the "Olympia 22" began on Monday, March 26. By Thursday, March 29, a mistrial was declared and information about surveillance on activists surfaced.

The 17 defendants had been arrested for trespass on May 30, 2006, while protesting the shipment of Army Stryker vehicles to Iraq from the Port of Olympia.

Monday, March 26

Following a day-long jury selection process, lead prosecutor Debra Eurich gave her opening statement. Within minutes she breached one of the agreements made in pretrial, almost causing a mistrial. Further motions for mistrial would be filed by the defense all week, as the prosecution repeatedly tried to push the boundaries of what it was allowed to say.

Tuesday, March 27

On Tuesday, the prosecution called its first witness, Thurston County Detective Rod Gray. Gray showed video footage of the May 30 demonstration. The prosecution attempted to use the video to show how defendants had trespassed by crossing an invisible line. Eurich had hoped to use video footage taken after the arrests to show that a line was eventually demarcated and dispersal orders were eventually made. Following objections by the defense, the judge ruled that footage taken after the arrests would be irrelevant to the case and would only be prejudicial to the jury. Consequently the prosecution spent much time fast-forwarding and rewinding through the video in order to locate a segment in the video that was ultimately non-existent.

Wednesday, March 28

On Wednesday, the prosecution presented its second witness, Mike Crawford, facility security officer at the Port of Olympia. Crawford attempted to win over the jury by twice evoking the "9/11 attacks on our country," to no avail. He also incorrectly recalled seeing one of the defendants on May 30. Although he repeatedly described a "fence line" that the defendants had crossed, under cross-examination he admitted that the "fence line" was never mentioned by any party on May 30, nor had there been any communication made about a "fence line."

Following Crawford's testimony, the prosecution called up Capt. Brad Watkins of the Thurston County Sheriffs Office. The prosecution attempted to introduce booking photos of the defendants, but the defense objected that doing so would be prejudicial, as booking photos often imply guilt to the jury. Despite the defense's protests, Eurich boldly flashed a copy of one of the booking photos to the jury, causing the defense to make more motions for a mistrial.

The judge placed a near-impossible bar for a mistrial and was determined to resume the court session. However, by 3:30 pm Eurich suffered an emotional breakdown and could not continue. The judge ended the day early. By then the judge was expecting the trial to go for two weeks, possibly three.

Thursday, March 29

On Thursday, lead prosecutor Eurich, still recovering from the previous day's breakdown, deferred control to Senior Deputy Prosecutor Steve Straume. Capt. Watkins returned to the witness stand, where he gave information inconsistent with Mike Crawford's. Watkins failed to explain why he had absolutely no memory of a conversation he had with Prosecutor Eurich concerning video footage shot on May 30 by the Olympia Police Department -- video that was subsequently destroyed before the defense learned about it.

By then it was clear that the prosecution was calling unreliable witnesses. Along with the fact that Eurich, who had been leading the case since almost the beginning, was no longer able to take the lead, it looked like the state's case was falling apart. But the prosecution was about to reveal its secret weapon.

During cross-examination of the prosecution's third witness, two men entered and handed the prosecution a document. That document would soon provide the impetus for a mistrial. The two men who entered were Detective Mike Hirte and his superior, Chief Jim Chamberlain, both of the Thurston County Sheriffs Office. Soon after receiving the document, the prosecution asked for a recess. During the recess, Straume presented the document to the defense.

The document turned out to be a confidential Excel spreadsheet drawn up by the defense. On March 31, prior to the start of the trial, legal assistant Karen Weill had compiled the information sheets of all the potential jurors and consolidated them into a single Excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was then emailed to the defense attorneys, as well as to a riseup.net email list that had been created for the defendants. Immediately after emailing the spreadsheet, however, Weill realized that the email list did not necessarily contain only defendants in this case. Upon consulting with Weill, defendant Andrew Yankey sent an email to the same email list a few minutes later, stating that the spreadsheet contained confidential information, and was to be read only by the defense team and the defendants and should by no means be disseminated.

The email list included 8 former defendants and May 2006 arrestees who were not authorized to receive the document. However they were people known to the Oly 22 who could safely be trusted not to read or disseminate the document, as requested. But unknown to the defendants and legal team at the time, there was a ninth email address that had been secretly lurking on the email list for over a month. The owner of that ninth email address, jaamt004@gmail.com, possibly tipped off by Yankey's warning, then contacted the Thurston County Prosecutors Office with the document.

Mistrial

By Wednesday, March 28, at the request of Straume, Chamberlain assigned Hirte to investigate the document. By Thursday afternoon, Straume had the information he was looking for and made his motion for a mistrial. Predictably, Straume downplayed his personal interest in a mistrial and exaggerated his concern for the jurors, whom he patronizingly referred to as "people who are only being good citizens," whose sensitive information were put "out there," on the Internet.

Straume was incorrect. The information was not available anywhere on the Internet, not even on riseup.net, because the option to archive messages had been deactivated. Thus the only unexpected recipients of the original spreadsheet would have been those who were already subscribed to the defense team's email list on March 31. In fact, the only security risk to the jurors was the mysterious jaamt004@gmail.com, who was collaborating with the Thurston County Sheriffs Office and the Prosecutors Office.

Regardless, Judge Dubuisson felt a duty to inform the jurors of the security breach, and by doing so, would taint the jury to the extent that she would have to call a mistrial. And it was done.

Another mysterious email address

The Oly 22 defendants eventually learned of a configuration error with their email list. Although the message archives were properly deactivated, membership had been open. But since the list was never advertised, and it was clearly labeled as an exclusive list for defendants, nobody new signed on to the list, except for jaamt004@gmail.com. On Wednesday, March 28, the day before the mistrial, a second mysterious email subscribed to the list, edmund.bob@gmail.com.

The defendants learned of the existence of edmund.bob@gmail.com during Thursday's court proceedings and accused Det. Hirte of using that email address. Det. Hirte faced the judge and responded with this non-answer: "My name is not 'edmund-dot-bob' at all."

Detective Hirte

Mike Hirte has been employed with the Thurston County Sheriffs Office at least since 1998. During last year's Port of Olympia protests, Hirte was spotted filming activists. When approached at the time, he had responded that he was with "Homeland Security." He currently works in forensic investigation, and in particular, computer forensics. Following the Oly 22 mistrial, he refused to answer any questions from the defendants, not even when he was asked who he worked for. Hirte had also been assigned to research some YouTube videos of last year's Port protests.

The mysterious email addresses

Following the mistrial, administrators of local activist email lists determined that both edmund.bob@gmail.com and jaamt004@gmail.com were possible government agents. They were discovered to have been lurking in numerous local activist lists. As soon as the administrators became suspicious of them, these two email entities started mysteriously unsubscribing themselves from activist mailing lists.

Local activists are currently investigating the extent of government or right-wing infiltration. They have so far determined that there was interest in these mailing lists by outside entities at least since mid-February, possibly coinciding with organizing around the Port Militarization Resistance and Fort Lewis's shipment of Stryker vehicles through the Port of Tacoma.

Pierce County prosecutors had been present during the entire length of the trial, taking notes.

Following the mistrial, the jurors informed the defendants that they were already leaning 7 to 1 in favor of a "not guilty" verdict, because the prosecution had been presenting such a poor case.