4/22 Update: The plaintiffs rested their case in chief Thursday, April 21, with the exception of the possible testimony of former California Attorney General Dan Lungren, who has been subpoenaed to appear as a final witness on Monday, April 25. Lungren is fighting the subpoena. The office of the current Attorney General of California, Bill Lockyer, has filed a motion to quash the subpoena on various technical legal grounds. A hearing on the motion to quash has been rescheduled for Monday April 25th, 2005, at 1:30 PM, before Judge Illston, immediately following the regular trial session. Read more

After nearly eight years, two trials, a trip to the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court, the “Pepper Spray 8” – forest activists whose eyes were swabbed with pepper spray-soaked q-tips during peaceful protests – are heading back to court for trial number three. “We’re hoping the third time’s the charm,” said Plaintiff Spring Lundberg, who was seventeen when members of the Humboldt County Sheriffs Department held her eyelids open while applying pepper spray during a sit-in at Pacific Lumber Company in protest of ancient redwood logging in Headwaters forest.

This civil rights trial will be heard again in federal court on April 13th after two hold-out jurors prevented a verdict in the September 2004 trial. At issue is whether police used excessive force when they forced pepper spray into the eyes of protesters staging a sit-in. The defendants are Humboldt County Sheriffs' Dept., Eureka Police Dept., the former Sheriff and current Sheriff of that county.

Read more | More Details at the No Pepper Spray website.