No perjury charges vs. animal activist

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/190056_perjury09.html

No perjury charges vs. animal activist

Documents in federal case are accidentally tossed

Thursday, September 9, 2004

By PAUL SHUKOVSKY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The U.S. Attorney's Office said yesterday it has dropped perjury charges against an animal rights activist partly because key documents in the case were accidentally thrown away.

Allison Lance Watson was accused of lying to a Seattle grand jury investigating a May 2000 arson attack on an Olympia forest-product company. Watson allegedly lied about whether an activist friend -- considered by the FBI as a suspect in the arson -- had used a truck that Watson had rented.

The government dropped the perjury charge Thursday after failing to produce transcripts of conversations within the grand-jury room before and after Watson testified.

"It happened by accident -- totally inadvertent," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Bartlett, who explained that the documents were thrown out as the office was getting ready to move to the new federal courthouse.

Bartlett said an employee threw away roughly 10 years of paper tapes containing transcripts of grand-jury proceedings in which witnesses were not present in the belief that there were electronic discs containing the same information.

"In their mind, they were just destroying paper duplicates," Bartlett said. But there was not a complete set of backup discs, he said.

No transcripts recording the testimony of grand jury witnesses were lost, Bartlett said.

"I don't think it will affect any (other cases) at all," Bartlett said.

"I've been here since 1985 and am unaware of anyone needing those paper" transcripts, he said.

In the case of the perjury charges against Watson, Seattle attorney Angelo Calfo sought to defend his client by showing that the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Friedman, had constructed a "perjury trap," by tricking her into committing perjury. To further his argument, Calfo successfully sought an order from U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman requiring the U.S. Attorney's Office to produce transcripts of conversations in the grand-jury chambers made both before and after Watson testified.

The problem was that those transcripts had been thrown out.

Calfo said Watson was ordered back before the grand jury last Thursday, but refused to answer questions.

Said Calfo: "Her position was: 'I was called before the grand jury and falsely accused of perjury in a situation where I felt I was tricked. I don't feel it's fair to require me to continue to cooperate under these circumstances.' "

Thursday, prosecutors dropped the perjury charges against Watson, which, if she had been found guilty, could have brought her five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Watson pled guilty that day to a misdemeanor contempt charge for failing to answer the grand jury's questions. She will be sentenced in November and faces a maximum of six months incarceration.

Watson is the wife of the president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Paul Watson, best known in Washington state for leading the protests in 1999 when the Makah Tribe resumed hunting gray whales.

In dropping the perjury charge, the government agreed not to prosecute Watson for any crimes based on evidence currently in the possession of the United States. It also agreed not to subpoena Watson in regard to any current investigation.

Watson could not be reached for comment yesterday. But Calfo said that during the plea, she "made clear that she was not involved in, or had any information on, any arson."

Meanwhile, Watson's friend, animal rights activist Gina Lynn, is being held at the Federal Detention Center at SeaTac on charges of contempt for failing to answer the questions of the grand jury, said her lawyer, Peter Camiel. Lynn, a vegan, has taken no solid food since she was imprisoned on Aug. 26, Camiel said. Camiel said it was unclear whether the lost transcripts would affect his client's case. But he said he is exploring the matter.

In May 2000, the Watsons were hauling equipment between the Southern California office of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and the organization's office in Friday Harbor in a rented a Penske truck.

About 2:30 a.m. May 7, 2000, a fire ripped through the headquarters of Holbrook Inc., an Olympia timber company. Three weeks later, the Earth Liberation Front issued a communique claiming credit for the crime on behalf of a group called "Revenge of the Trees."

That same night, someone broke into the Dai-Zen Egg Farm in Burlington and stole 228 chickens. The Animal Liberation Front issued a communique saying that the chickens had been placed in "loving homes."

Six hours later, a Penske rental truck pulled into the AM/PM Mini Market in Rochester, south of Olympia. According to store employees, "the occupants of the truck dumped a number of plastic bags containing clothes in a Dumpster behind the store," according to court documents. The truck had the same license plate as the one rented by Allison Watson, the document asserts.

A Thurston County deputy sheriff found five bags containing "three sets of dark clothes, two black ski masks, three pair of gloves, a wrapper from a pair of bolt cutters and a wrapper of wire tires." The clothes were wet and covered with grass. The FBI obtained footage from the AM/PM's surveillance camera and identified two people in the truck, Gina Lynn and Joshua Trentor.

P-I reporter Paul Shukovsky can be reached at 206-448-8072 or paulshukovsky [at] seattlepi.com

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