DATE: Friday, October 31, 1997              TAG: 9710310642

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER 
                                            LENGTH:   45 lines

NORFOLK PEACE ACTIVIST GETS 13 MONTHS IN JAIL FOR DAMAGING WARSHIP

A Norfolk peace activist has been sentenced to 13 months in prison for his role in damaging a Navy destroyer docked in a Maine shipyard as a protest against nuclear weapons.

Steve Baggarly also was ordered to pay $4,667 in restitution and serve two years of supervised probation. He was one of three defendants sentenced Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Gene Carter in Portland, Maine.

Baggarly and his wife, Kim Williams, operate Norfolk's Catholic Worker House, which provides food and shelter to the homeless.

Baggarly and five other activists, calling themselves the Prince of Peace Plowshares, cut through a lock on a gate at Bath Iron Works and boarded The Sullivans, a nuclear-capable Aegis destroyer, in the early hours of Feb. 12, Ash Wednesday.

They smashed control panels with hammers and spilled blood on the bridge. The Navy said they caused about $80,000 in damage to the ship.

At their trial in May, Carter barred them from using international law or moral imperatives as a defense. After two hours of deliberations, a jury convicted them on charges of destroying government property and conspiracy.

By preventing the defendants from explaining their motives to the jury, the judge ``made the notion of a fair trial a farce,'' the Plowshares group said in a statement issued after the sentencings.

Also sentenced Wednesday were Susan Crane, a former high school teacher from Baltimore, and Tom Lewis-Borbely, an artist from Worcester, Mass. Of the six defendants, Crane received the stiffest sentence, 27 months. Lewis-Borbely got six months.

Sentenced Monday were Philip Berrigan, a longtime activist and former Catholic priest from Baltimore, 24 months; the Rev. Steve Kelly, a Jesuit priest from San Jose, Calif., 21 months; and Mark Colville, an urban minister from New Haven, Conn., 13 months.

Several spectators who spoke out on behalf of the defendants were ordered removed from the courtroom by Carter.

After the sentencings, Plowshares supporters went to the shipyard and chained themselves to a fence in protest. The 14 protesters, nine Monday and five Wednesday, were arrested on trespassing charges. KEYWORDS: PROTESTER U.S. NAVY VANDALISM SENTENCE

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