Religious argument may create new path for Kings Bay break-in defendants
August 3, 2018
The Brunswick News
Religious argument may create new path for Kings Bay break-in defendants
By Wes Wolf
Assistant U.S. Attorney Karl Knoche said the Kings Bay Plowshares defendants and others in their cause created a “cottage industry” of breaking into and vandalizing nuclear U.S. military installations over the past 38 years, and then trying to use the subsequent prosecutions to get the United States to denuclearize.
Indeed, two of the Plowshares defendants were involved in federal appellate court decisions referred to by both the prosecution and the defense during Thursday’s motions hearing in U.S. District Court in Brunswick. But the defendants had not before used the Religious Freedom Restoration Act as a defense, creating the possibility of the case to plow new ground on the extent of protections afforded by the federal government for religious exercise.
Bill Quigley, who represents defendant Elizabeth McAlister and is a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans, said the two standards RFRA sets up are the government’s compelling interest and to carry out that interest in the least-restrictive way possible…