Plaintiffs' Case Wraps Up in Pepper Spray By Q-tip Trial

For immediate
release
Sept. 16, 2004
Contact: Karen Pickett, 510-548-3113

Plaintiffs' Case Wraps Up in Pepper Spray By Q-tip Trial

Young Pepper Spray-Doused Activists On Stand Thursday; Defense Puts
Case On Next Week

Beta cam video news releases and courtroom drawings are available
through the contact phone number. Video images, legal documents,
other background and links available at http://www.nopepperspray.org.
Press packets are available in the courtroom or through the above
contact.

San Francisco, Calif.-The pepper spray by Q-tip trial to determine
whether activists' Fourth Amendment rights were violated when law
enforcement inserted Q-tips soaked in liquid pepper spray directly
into their eyes continues in SF Federal court.

On Wednesday, Sept. 15, the jury heard from five of the young
activists who were subjected to the pepper spray by Q-tip
applications as they were locked to each other in sit-in actions in
1997. Their emotional and dramatic testimony, supported by police
videotape footage shown in the courtroom, followed questioning of
police officers who carried out the coercive procedure that Amnesty
International calls "tantamount to torture". The activists recounted
their temporary blindness, trauma and extreme pain as they told of
panic attacks and nightmares that stayed with them long after the
incidents.

The next witnesses on the stand will include the two named defendants:

… Chief Deputy (now Sheriff) Gary Philp of the Humboldt County
Sheriffs Dept. (HCSD) who researched pepper spray and gave the order
to his special response team to apply pepper spray in this totally
unprecedented manner, and
… Sheriff Dennis Lewis who was then head policy maker for the HCSD
and also approved the procedure.

On Monday, the Defense case is expected to open with more witnesses
and continue through Wednesday, Sept. 22, when it will then go to the
jury of four women and four men, who have been listening to testimony
since Sept. 8.

The lawsuit stems from three Headwaters Forest protests in 1997, at
the height of the campaign to save ancient redwoods. Activists had
locked themselves to each other at sit-in protests in rural northern
California. To remove them, Sheriffs' deputies used the unheard-of
tactic of application of pepper spray by Q-tip. The activists filed
suit, and the first trial in 1998 ended in a hung jury. After
appeals in higher courts, the case is being retried.

Court is in session 8:30 a.m.to 3:30 p.m. Monday to Thursday before
Judge Susan Illston, in Courtroom 10, 19th floor of the Federal
Building at 450 Golden Gate Ave., San Francisco.
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