By Kevin Murphy, correspondent for The Capital Times, Madison, WI
6-12-02

A Madison woman, one of six peace activists cited last month for trespassing on a U.S. Navy communications facility in northern Wisconsin, ended her protest by paying a $100 fine and having her case dismissed Tuesday in federal court.

Judy Miner, 54, an orthopedics nurse at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, briefly entered the ELF (extremely low frequency) transmitter site near Clam Lake in Ashland County during a Mother's Day demonstration. An estimated 100 protesters there claimed the facility violates an international treaty the United States has signed banning the use of first-strike nuclear weapons.

The five other alleged trespassers - Cory Bartholomew, 33, of Blue Mounds; John Bachman of Eau Claire; Jeff Leys, 38, of Milwaukee; John LaForge, 46, of Luck; and Jane Hosking, 34, of Luck - are scheduled to be arraigned later this month before Magistrate Stephen Crocker.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim O'Shea said ELF trespassers can pay a $100 fine, but if they go to trial they face maximum penalties of six months in jail or a $5,000 fine. In April, Crocker imposed a $500 fine on one ELF trespasser and fined two others $100 and ordered them to perform 50 hours of community service.

The Navy uses ELF to send messages to nuclear missile-carrying U.S. and British subs.

Although Miner has been a disarmament advocate for years, the May demonstration was the first time she said she purposely broke the law. Miner said she was split between her respect for the law and an obligation to make the world safer by removing weapons of mass destruction.

"I feel I was guilty because I trespassed, but in another sense I feel as if I'm not guilty, in terms of international law; and, as a registered nurse, I am responsible to try to save lives....So I paid the fine and will do a lot of soul searching to see what comes next," Miner said after court.

Miner said she admires those who risk going to jail in protest of the continued operation of ELF, but she was not ready to do that now.

She did not rule out attending another protest and possibly contesting the next citation in court. During the past month she has urged friends and other activists to write the court and ask that demonstrators not be treated as trespassers.

Protesters at the ELF site in upper peninsula of Michigan are not prosecuted, said John LaForge of Nukewatch, a Wisconsin-based peace action and environmental group.