Environmentalistsâ€™ $100,000 Bail for Civil Disobedience

There is a bail reduction hearing this morning for two environmental activists who protested mountain-top removal coal mining and had their bail set at $100,000.

EmmaKate Martin and Benjamin Bryant took part in non-violent civil disobedience to blockade Massey Energyâ€™s regional headquarters in Boone County, W.Va. They were charged with four non-violent misdemeanor charges of trespassing, obstructing an officer, conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor, and littering.

As Climate Ground Zero notes, violent criminals have had their bail set much lower:

Magistrates in Boone County have set bails at $30,000 and $20,000, both with 10% cash bond options for individuals charged with malicious wounding; the first for intentionally hitting a man with a van and the second for stabbing a man.

Magistrate Snodgrass set a $2,000 bail, with $200 bond option, for a woman charged with felony malicious wounding for stabbing her husband in the head.

Snodgrass also set a $40,000 bail, with $4,000 bond option, for a woman arrested while driving under the influence of illegal drugs and alcohol two days after she was arrested for stabbing her husband.

This type of disproportionate response to non-violent activism isn’t an isolated instance. For example, when activists were arrested in their non-violent campaign against the I-69 highway project, the government argued for a high bond by saying that one of the defendants, Hugh Farrell, “advocated literature and materials which advocate anarchy.”

And as we have seen time and again on this site, environmental activists are hit with significantly higher sentences than apolitical, violent offenders. (See: “Environmentalist Sentenced to 21 Years as a â€œTerroristâ€; Violent Racists Receive Half That.“)

I’ll keep you posted later today on the outcome of the hearing.

UPDATE: