Pitstop Ploughshares

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The Pitstop Ploughshares are a group of five pacifist Catholic Worker members who made their way into Shannon Airport and disarmed a US Navy war plane in the early hours of 3 February 2003. Their actions were inspired by the vision of Isaiah 2:4 to "beat swords into ploughshares". ^[1]

The Pit Stop Ploughshares – Deirdre Clancy, Nuin Dunlop, Karen Fallon, Ciaron O'Reilly and Damien Moran - spent between four and eleven weeks in Limerick Prison. They went to trial in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in March and October 2005 on two counts of Criminal Damage, €100 and US$2.5 million. Penalties, if convicted, would have carried a maximum of ten years imprisonment. ^[2]

Their March 2005 trial collapsed on the sixth day when Judge O'Donnell called a mistrial and dismissed the jury, having made biased comments about a defence witness. Media were instructed not to report on the reasons for the mistrial, but this restriction is now lifted because legal proceedings are finished.^[3]

The October 2005 re-trial collapsed on the 10th day, after Judge Donagh MacDonagh agreed with defence counsel that his attendance at the presidential inauguration in 2001 of George W Bush (along with other meetings he had with the Bush when he was Governor of Texas) were grounds for his removal from the case, in that his role was tainted with a "perception of bias".^[4]

The third trial of the Pitstop Ploughshares trial started on July 10th 2006 and resulted in an unanimous not guilty verdict on both charges of criminal damage (to the warplane, and the door of the hangar) after 12 days of testimony and legal argument. Judge Miriam Reynolds had agreed with the defence on Day nine of the proceedings, after extensive submissions and legal argument, on the applicability of the statutory lawful excuse defence.

After four-and-a-half hours of deliberation, the Dublin jury of seven women and five men returned and gave their decision that all the accused should be acquitted, as they were acting to save lives and property in Iraq and Ireland, and that their disarmament action was reasonable, taking into consideration all the circumstances.^[5]

Over 100 international and numerous Irish anti-war activists converged in Dublin for all three trials. Countless public meetings took place around the trials, with well-known speakers such as Denis Halliday and Kathy Kelly. Despite the acquittal of the five activists making Irish legal history, and despite it being the first unanimous acquittal in the history of the ploughshares movement, the Irish mainstream media had showed little or no interest in the defence case. This was reflective of their general lack of interest in the anti-war movement as a whole.