SACRAMENTO, CALIF.–On January 8, Green Scare prisoner Eric McDavid was ordered released from prison after nine years because the government admitted to withholding documents from the defense at his 2007 trial.
U.S. District Judge Morrison England ordered him freed by granting a joint request by attorneys from the Civil Liberties Defense Center (CLDC) and the Department of Justice. Just as his supporters charged, Eric spent nine years in prison because of a rigged trial and a lying FBI stoolie.
Jenny Esquivel, Eric McDavid’s partner and an organizer with his support committee said, “Since 9/11, the United States government has mercilessly entrapped people, destroying their lives just to make political examples of them, especially in Muslim communities.”
“The government has targeted leftists and anarchists with similar fervor. This, like so many other alleged conspiracies the public hears about, are FBI inventions from the start,” Esquivel charged.
McDavid was arrested in 2006 and convicted for conspiring to damage or destroy property that he deemed destructive to the environment, although no such destruction occurred, nor was any attempt made. He was sentenced to 235 months in prison–almost the 20-year maximum.
The same judge accepted an alternate plea by McDavid to general conspiracy carrying a maximum sentence of five years but since McDavid already served nine, he was immediately released. In exchange for the reduction, the government insisted McDavid waive all claims for civil damages.
McDavid and his two codefendants were entrapped by an overzealous FBI, and its then 19-year-old, pink-haired informant, “Anna,” who lied on the stand. Eric faced an unfair trial, and lost nine years of his life. He leaves prison without so much as a “Sorry about that.”
According to Ben Rosenfeld, one of McDavid’s CLDC attorneys, “Anna literally herded the group together from around the country, paying for their transportation, food, and lodging.” “And when they failed to show enthusiasm for her schemes, she berated them and threw fits,” he said. “Any conspiracy that existed was hers not theirs.”
Anna admitted at the trial that the FBI trained her to exploit McDavid’s romantic feelings for her by telling him: “We need to put the mission first. There’s time for romance later.”
McDavid sent Anna love letters and other correspondence that the government concealed from the defense, turning over one letter and ten emails for the first time this past November.
Additional government documents which surfaced only after trial show that the FBI urgently ordered, then inexplicably canceled a polygraph examination of Anna, and that extensive surveillance of McDavid prior to Anna’s influence over him failed to reveal any predisposition to commit the charged offense.
CLDC’s Mark Vermeulen said, “If the government had provided the missing information to Eric’s trial counsel, as should have been done, counsel would have used it to question Anna’s veracity and to show Eric was entrapped. He never would have had to spend nine years in prison.”
Anna first came to the attention of the FBI at 17 after writing a community college paper about infiltrating political protest groups. The FBI assigned her to attend the 2004 national political conventions in Boston and New York, a global trade summit in Georgia and anarchist gatherings in Iowa and Indiana.
Her current whereabouts are unknown, but it’s doubtful she still sports pink hair.
FE note: You can write Eric, c/o SPS, POB 163126, Sacramento CA 95816.
Donations to help his re-entry can be made through his website: http://supporteric.org/