The Appeals Court decision denied Oakland's claims of immunity from prosecution for their false arrest and illegal searches of Judi and Darryl after a motion-triggered pipe bomb exploded beneath Judi's car seat as she drove through Oakland on May 24, 1990, on an organizing tour for the nonviolent Redwood Summer anti-logging campaign. The bomb nearly killed Judi, leaving her severely disabled. She died of breast cancer in 1997.
In their ruling, the justices acknowledged that the OPD and the FBI had brazenly lied in obtaining two search warrants, then repeatedly fed these same lies to the media in an attempt to portray Judi and Darryl as violent terrorists who were transporting the bomb. Specifically, the OPD and FBI claimed that Judi and Darryl must have known about the bomb, since (the officers maintained) it was easily visible on the back floorboard of Judi's car before it exploded. FBI photos prove that the bomb had actually been hidden under the driver's seat of the car. Further, the police claimed that nails used as shrapnel in the bomb were identical to ones in a bag in Judi's car and to others found at her home, and that they all had come from a "batch of between 200 and 1000 nails." In fact, the nails in the bomb were entirely different from the others, and nails are made in batches of millions.
No charges were ever brought against Judi and Darryl, and no legitimate investigation was ever conducted to apprehend the real bombers. The activists filed suit against the FBI and the Oakland Police in 1991, one year after the bombing. The lawsuit charges the FBI and OPD with false arrest, illegal search and seizure, and conspiracy to violate the activists' First Amendment rights by using the bombing as an excuse to falsely associate Bari, Cherney, and Earth First! with violence in order to undermine their political activism in defense of the redwoods.
Erica Etelson, attorney for Cherney and for Bari's estate, said, "The Oakland Police suffered a major setback.... We are now set to prove their illegal conspiracy to a jury." Said plaintiff Darryl Cherney, "The appeals court has raked the Oakland Police over the coals for their attempts to delay our case and their violation of our freedom of speech. The FBI and OPD's continuing abuses of the rights of American citizens must be stopped."
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1999
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