July 8 th , 2004

Sentencing Statement – Carl Kabat

1. I presume that everyone in this room knows that the bomb at N8 could kill about 2 or 3 million people.

2. 2/3 of the American people say that we should get rid of nuclear weapons. We are a democracy. So what does the will of the people matter?

3. If George Bush got rid of nuclear weapons he would probably be killed.

Gandhi , a lawyer said, “Open wide the prison gates and we must enter them as a bridegroom enters the bridal chamber. It is not in the courts, or halls of justice, or the assemblies of power that truth and justice will be won, but in the jails and sometimes on the gallows.”

I never completely understood why, when found guilty by the courts, Gandhi asked for the maximum sentence possible, but I do understand it a bit better now, and I ask for the maximum sentence now.

Lawyer friends have told me (not anyone in this room) that the courts are not a matter of Truth and Justice but a matter of power – and we know who has the power.

Everything that Hitler did was legal. If you have enough power you can get any evil that you wish made legal. The great evils of history have all been ‘legal': slavery, segregation, and apartheid have been legal but that does not make them morally correct.

The author John has Pilate asking, “What is truth?” and then had the one to whom the question was addressed crucified.

In 1983 the World Council of Churches declared, “The development, deployment, or use of nuclear weapons is a crime against humanity.” Vatican Council II, ending in 1965 with all of the world's Catholic bishops assembled said, “Nuclear weapons are a crime against humanity.”

We also have the United Nation s Universal Declaration of Human Rights followed by the international covenant on civil and political rights article six, from which the human rights committee established under article 28 says, “The production, testing, possession, deployment, and use of nuclear weapons must be prohibited and recognized as crimes against humanity.

The bottom line is that we are all criminals – since this is our country.

What is Truth? Are these truths or falsehoods? I believe these are truths.

Einstein said, “There is no secret, there is no defense. What is needed is an aroused peoples of the world.”

We have a grave responsibility because we have used nuclear weapons and have more of them in our possession than the rest of the entire world combined.

Almost 900 of our young men and women have been killed supposedly because of weapons of mass destruction.

The responsibility of what has happened in this room and is happening today in this room resides with the people of this room. There was no jury to whom the responsibility could be shifted. I take responsibility for my actions and in fact am proud of them. You, brother magistrate judge Craig Shaffer and brother prosecutor must do likewise. I would say that if someone knows a better way to get rid of nuclear weapons, please, in God's name, do it.

Some pertinent facts and truths that should have been allowed into the courtroom:

About a hundred German judges, possibly knowing of the conspiracy of silence during the Nazi era, blocked the US base at Mutlangen where Pershing II nuclear armed missiles were stationed – they are now gone.

Humanitarian law, the UN charter, US soldiers manual, Kellogg Brian pact, the 1996 world court opinion in regards to nuclear weapons and the even stronger dissenting opinion and many other things such as necessity, competing harms, and such things are pertinent in regard to insane nuclear weapons.

Bill Quigley , law professor at Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans , titled a release “Felony criminal charges dismissed against blood pouring peace activists.” International law defense was used; the jurors were deadlocked 9-3 in favor of finding the defendants innocent. He further says that prosecutor Dentes said that he would not try to re-prosecute because he thought another trial would have the same outcome.

In Iowa and in England , the international court opinion regarding nuclear weapons was allowed to be presented and the individuals were found not guilty.

You, Brother Magistrate Judge and Brother Prosecutor are the ones who have ruled out the international court opinion in regard to nuclear weapons. You, brothers Magistrate Judge and Prosecutor could have allowed all the truth to be presented and then ignored it, but you chose not to.

What is Truth? (God is Truth. God is Justice.) We can deny both.

Shakespeare has Mark Anthony, after the murder of Caesar, say of Brutus , “for he is an honorable man.”

The judge, who sentenced Franz Jaegarstaetter to be beheaded for refusing service under Hitler , cried when he sentenced Franz . He too was an honorable man. And as Shakespeare said, “and so they are all.” If this planet is destroyed it will be because of honorable men.

Our late president Ronald Regan said, “A nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought.” If that is true then I ask why we still have nuclear weapons and why you defend them.

The End

•  I ask you, Brother Magistrate Judge to relieve my lawyer, Ms. Sue Tyburski from any duties she has to this court, since I will not appeal (and who has done a wonderful job under the restrictions that you and the prosecutor imposed) so that she could sit with the sisters and brothers who attempt to stand for Truth—all of us in our own feeble ways.

•  I would invite you to ask the marshals to remove me from this court and that I be sentenced in absentia.

•  When I leave here and return to the table I intend to turn my back on this court as a symbol that Truth was not able to be spoken here. I think it is not so much contempt of this court but rather sadness that Truth could not be spoken in this room, as it is in most courtrooms of this country.