Two articles about Rod Coronado

LA City Beat
~ By DEAN KUIPERS ~

It’s only appropriate, perhaps, that the future of the First Amendment takes shape in a hippie law office in San Francisco’s North Beach district, surrounded by strippers. A light April rain falls on furtive patrons of the Lusty Lady and the Roaring 20s on the street below as legendary radical environmentalist Rodney Coronado sits in a conference room in the Pier 5 Law Offices, strategizing with some of this country’s finest civil rights attorneys.

Coronado’s no stranger to this scenario, having emerged only days before from his second stretch in federal prison, this time for eight months. He listens attentively, his dark Yaqui Indian heritage shining through as he munches on a veggie burrito. The glow on his fiancee Chrysta’s face says everything you'd need to know about how good it is to be out. But the joy may be short-lived. Now Coronado is caught up in a June prosecution he never could have foreseen and which has the environmentalist community, in particular, digging in for a long fight with the federal government.

That’s because his alleged crime doesn't involve something he actually did. Rather, it only involves something he said.
http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=5450&IssueNum=204
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NY Times article

Facing Trial Under Terror Law, Radical Claims a New Outlook

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: May 3, 2007

TUCSON — Rod Coronado is a celebrity ex-convict in the underground world of environmental and animal rights radicals who advocate burning construction sites and research labs. In 2003, just after giving a speech in San Diego in which he called fire a “cleansing force” and defended its use in strategic property destruction, a woman asked him a question.

Federal prosecutors say Mr. Coronado’s answer — a detailed description of a crude incendiary — should land him in federal prison for 20 years for violating a rarely invoked antiterrorism statute.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/us/03elf.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin