The Statement of Judge Lord

On November 8, 1984, two peace activists, John LaForge and Barbara Katt, came before Judge Lord of the U.S. District Court in Minneapolis for sentencing. They had engaged in an act of civil disobedience. Judge Lord's statement, somewhat abridged, was as follows:

By Miles Lord | 1986-10-01 12:00:00

It is the allegation of these young people that they committed the acts here complained of as a desperate plea to the American people and its government to stop the military madness which they sincerely believe will destroy us all, friend and enemy alike.

They have made a plausible argument that international law prohibits what our country is doing by way of manufacturing mass weapons of destruction. Common sense should, in my own personal view, dictate that such manufacture be curtailed.

The anomaly of this situation is that I am here called upon to punish two individuals who were charged with having caused damage to the property of a corporation in the amount of $33,000. It is this self-same corporation which only a few months ago was before me accused of having wrongfully embezzled from the U.S. Government the sum of $3.6 million. The employees of this company succeeded in boosting the corporate profits by wrongfully and feloniously juggling the books. Since these individuals were all employees of a corporation, it appears that it did not occur to anyone in the office of the Attorney General of the United States that the actions of these men constituted a criminal conspiracy for which they might be punished. The government demanded only that Sperry pay back a mere 10 percent of the amount by which the corporation had been unlawfully enriched. Could it be that these corporate men who were working to build weapons of mass destruction received special treatment because of the nature of their work? Is there something sanctified about this effort to commit national suicide?

I am now called upon to determine the amount of restitution that is to be required of the two individuals who have done damage to the property of Sperry.

The inexorable pressure which generates from those who are engaged in making a living and a profit from building military equipment and the pork barrelling that goes on in Congress to obtain more such contracts for the individual state will in the ultimate consume itself in an atomic holocaust. These same factors exert a powerful pressure upon a judge in my position to go along with the theory that there is something sacred about a bomb and that those who raise their voices or their hands against it should be struck down as enemies of the people, no matter that in their hearts they feel and know that they are friends of the people.

I would here in this instance take the sting out of the bomb, attempt in some way to force the government to remove the halo with which it seems to embrace any device which can kill and to place thereon a shroud, the shroud of death, destruction, mutilation, disease and debilitation.

If there he an adverse reaction to this sentence, I will anxiously await the protestations of those who complain of my attempts to correct the imbalance that now exists in a system that operates in such manner as to provide one type of justice for the rich and a lesser type for the poor. One standard for the mighty and another for the meek. And a system which finds its humanness and objectivity is sublimated to military madness and the worship of the bomb.

A judge sitting here as I do is not called upon to do that which is politically expedient or popular but is called upon to exercise his calm and deliberate judgment in a manner best suited to accomplish and accommodate and vindicate the rights of the people acting through its government and the rights of those people who are the subject matter of such actions. The most popular thing to do at this particular time would be to sentence them to a ten year period of imprisonment, and some judges might be predisposed to do just that.

(Judge Lord did not impose a ten-year sentence; rather, he sentenced each of the defendants to a six-month suspended sentence, under probation.)

Judge Miles Lord
Federal District Court

Minneapolis November 8, 1984