Erica Bryant

@Erica_Bryant_

You can bet money that Earl A. Evans, the Air Force colonel who has restraining orders against a number of protesting grandmothers, is not actually scared. One of these grandmothers was just sentenced to a year in jail for violating this crazy order.

People who care about the First Amendment ought to be horrified.

Orders of protection are typically given to domestic violence victims or crime witnesses who are in physical danger. A while ago, leadership at the Hancock Air Base in Syracuse discovered that they also can be used to protect them from the annoyance of peaceful protesters.

After the base started dispatching bomb-bearing drones, protesters started showing up outside of its gates. Some carried pictures of children who were killed when drones hit the wrong targets. Others carried posters condemning assassinations in countries where there is no declared war. Some were arrested after blocking a gate to the base with their bodies.

There has been no history or threat of assault, strangulation, criminal obstruction of breathing or forcible touching against Evans, who requested the orders. Nevertheless, Dewitt Town Court granted his request and now more than 50 people are required to stay away from his home and place of employment.

One of them, Mary Ann Grady Flores, violated this order during a protest by crossing into a section of the street that put her too close to the 8-foot fence topped with 2 feet of barbed wire that surrounds Col. Evans' place of work. For this crime, the Ithaca resident was sentenced last week to a year in prison, the maximum allowed.

At the July 10 sentencing, Dewitt Town Judge David Gideon said that Flores can't just disregard a legal order just because she and many others find it absurd. He disregarded the probation department's recommendation that conditional discharge or probation would be appropriate for this kind of offense, saying that Flores needed to be taught a lesson. "As we learn as children while growing up, testing the limits can be a learning process with boundaries and consequences to be had."

The lesson Gideon is really trying to teach is that protesters who step out of line will get the book thrown at them. Judy Bello, a pacifist from Webster, said the restraining orders and related stiff sentences are having the desired effect.

Since Evans received an order of protection against her, Bello has curtailed her activities outside the base. She has spent a couple of weeks in jail after protests in the past and felt they were an endurable sacrifice. A year is too long, she said. "I don't know what would happen to my household. It's a violation of our First Amendment rights to put so much pressure on us to stay away."

On Thursday, Onondaga County Court granted Flores a stay of sentence pending an appeal. She was freed on $5,000 bail. Flores' attorney, Lance Salisbury, is cautiously hopeful that higher courts will see things differently.

So am I. More than 20 people are facing similar stiff sentences for crimes committed during peaceful protests outside of the Hancock Air Base. Imprisoning them, at a cost of $60,000 a year each, will not make anyone safer.

In this case, it is the Constitution that needs protection.

Twitter @Erica_Bryant_