WAR PROTESTERS It doesn’t always pay to plead BY ALEX IRVINE

On March 20, a dozen people occupied Senator Susan Collins’s office in the Margaret Chase Smith Federal Building in Bangor and were arrested. Ten of them pled no contest and were sentenced in May to 48 hours in jail (suspended) and either 30 hours of community service or a $200 donation to charity.

The other two, Nancy Galland and Richard Stander, demanded a jury trial. They got it, and were found guilty of criminal trespass on October 16. Then Judge E. Allen Hunter continued sentencing until October 31.

What did he need two weeks to think about? It turns out he put the intervening time to good use, weighing issues of civil disobedience that maybe our Justice Department would do well to consider.

At the sentencing, Greg Campbell Penobscot County Assistant District Attorney argued for a substantial fine, citing the state’s time put into what he called a "frivolous issue."

Judge Hunter, though, didn’t see things that way. He pronounced himself convinced that the two had violated the law "in pursuit of a principle," and he invoked the Boston Tea Party, Martin Luther King, and Rosa Parks before sentencing Galland and Stander to 20 hours of community service, a much lighter sentence than their 10 compatriots got. The two District Judge-approved protesters then retired to Mamma Baldacci’s for a meal on the house.

Asked whether he thinks this result will have an effect on other protesters, Richard Stander says that he and Galland "certainly are buoyed up by the judge’s speech and his sentencing. It’s a validation of civil disobedience, a recognition by the court that the refusal to obey a police order that we believe to be illegal is justified. We’re grateful to the judge for helping to reestablish the force of civil disobedience, and we’re thrilled and appreciative that our action was vindicated by this thoughtful and scholarly judge."

Does he plan to get arrested again? "This certainly did not discourage us," Stander chuckles, and his "wife and partner in crime" Galland offers that they were a "pebble in the pond" that will reverberate.

"We told the judge," Stander concludes, "that we expect others to fill our public spaces and follow us in speaking truth to power."