Rev. Dr. Neal Jones
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Columbia
Today as I write this (Monday, Oct. 27), a friend of mine and of many within our congregation, Brett Bursey, Director of the SC Progressive Network (of which our Fellowship is a member), is appearing in Federal Court in Charleston for a hearing on a Writ of Coram Nobis. We pay lawyers to translate these legal Latin phrases for us. This one translates as “the error before us.” The error in question is an error that occurred in Brett’s original trial in 2003, in which he was convicted of threatening the President under a federal statute that governs “Presidential Assassination, Kidnapping, and Assault.” What on earth did the otherwise peace-loving Brett Bursey do to the President?, you may be wondering.
Well, at a political rally at the Columbia airport, at which President Bush was promoting local Republican candidates in the 2002 election, Brett was carrying a sign that read, “No More Wars for Oil.” When Brett was ordered to move to a designated “free speech zone” a half-mile away, he refused. Like many of us, Brett probably thought that the United States of America is a free speech zone. He was wrong, and for this he was arrested.
Interestingly, all the pro-Bush and pro-Republican signs that were surrounding the President at the rally were not considered a threat to his safety. One of the police officers who arrested Brett confided to him, “It’s the content of your sign that’s the problem.” Brett did not pose a security threat to the President; he represented a public relations threat. In the lead-up to and immediately following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, at every public appearance made by President Bush, the Secret Service instructed local police to corral protesters into areas far away from the President’s view – and the view of the media covering these events – so as to give the appearance that there was no opposition to war. The handlers of a communist regime couldn’t have done it better.
Brett, like the rest of us, knew that the Secret Service was being used as an armed political advance team by the President, and he filed discovery motions and subpoenas during his trial for any White House directives to the Secret Service, but these motions were denied as a “fishing expedition.” Since his conviction, Brett and his legal team have discovered the White House Advance Manual that indeed states, “There are several ways the advance person can prepare a site to minimize demonstrators. First, as always, work with the Secret Service and have them ask the local police department to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in view of the event site or the motorcade route” (p. 32). Hence, the error in Brett’s trial was that the government knowingly withheld evidence.
It is incredible to me that a peaceful demonstrator could be arrested and convicted in the United States of America, a nation founded by dissenters, for expressing a dissenting opinion. I hope that Brett wins his case today. Even more, I hope that our government will once again recognize the First Amendment to the Constitution.