A lawyer known for representing Maine activists arrested during protests is compiling a database of civil-disobedience cases to help him argue a lighter sentence for one of his clients. Phil Worden, an attorney based in Northeast Harbor, sent an e-mail to members of the progressive Maine Indymedia Web site on November 30, asking whether “anyone who has engaged in civil disobedience in the last five years would contact me with a brief description of what you did, what you were convicted of, which court it occurred in (and the name of the judge if you can remember it), and what sentence you received.” Worden hopes the information he culls from the rap sheets of Maine activists will convince an Augusta judge to sentence his client, Hillary Lister, to community service rather than 48 hours in jail.Lister, the president of the group Citizens Against Pollution in Town, chained herself to the gallery of the Maine Legislature during an April 2006 protest against plans to build a construction debris incinerator in Athens. Lister, 25, was charged with disorderly conduct and obstructing government administration. This is her first arrest; both charges are misdemeanors.
Worden hopes to prove that Maine’s nonviolent activists arrested for the first time are usually sentenced to community service. But, even with the database, Worden can’t guarantee Lister or any of his future nonviolent clients won’t spend time behind bars.
“When you get to sentencing issues, one judge isn’t bound by what another judge did,” Worden explains. “But it can be what we call persuasive authority that the more we can say, ‘This judge gave somebody who chained herself up community service and so did that judge and that judge,’ at a certain point it seems to me that becomes pretty persuasive that that’s what ought to happen. Unless there’s something particular in the case that justifies a jail sentence that makes it different than the other ones, there should be some kind of uniformity in sentencing.”
The Maine State Law Library does not have a database on civil-disobedience cases and Worden says he is not aware of any similar resource covering state activism. So far, Worden has received, he says, “five or six” responses. To contribute, e-mail Worden atpworden@igc.org.
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