Seven pro-life activists have been convicted of violating federal civil rights law and the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act in connection with a 2020 abortion clinic blockade in Sterling Heights, Michigan.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced the convictions Tuesday against Calvin Zastrow, Eva Zastrow, Eva Edl, Chester Gallagher, Heather Idoni, Joel Curry and Justin Phillips.
The FACE Act subjects anyone who “by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person because that person is or has been” providing “reproductive health services” to federal charges.
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In addition to FACE Act charges, each defendant faces a “felony conspiracy against rights” charge. Edl and Idoni face additional charges in connection with an April 2021 abortion clinic blockade in Saginaw, Michigan.
“These defendants orchestrated an unlawful clinic blockade and physically obstructed patients seeking access to their doctors, without regard to the serious medical needs of the women they blocked from accessing reproductive health care,” said DOJ Civil Rights Division Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke.
“These defendants intentionally broke the law. One woman’s fetus experienced fetal abnormalities and the defendants’ coordinated campaign of physical obstruction posed a grave and real threat to her health and fertility.”
The Thomas More Society, a legal group representing Gallagher, seeks to have the “conspiracy against rights” charges against its client thrown out Tuesday.
“Yet again, the Biden-Harris Department of Justice has decided to characterize the actions of peaceful pro-lifers as a felony ‘Conspiracy Against Rights,’ punishable by over a decade in federal prison,” Thomas More Society Senior Counsel Steve Crampton said in a statement.
“We are optimistic that our Motion to Dismiss the felony conspiracy charges will receive full and fair consideration by the Court,” Crampton added. “We also believe that the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Fischer v. United States confirms that the Department of Justice’s novel strategy to inflict [maximum] pain upon peaceful pro-lifers by adding a charge of felony Conspiracy Against Rights cannot be squared with the law and we stand ready to make that case.”
As explained in a motion to dismiss filed on Gallagher’s behalf on July 22, the June 28 Fischer decision determined that “the Sarbanes Oxley Act’s prohibition on obstructing official proceedings … must be narrowly interpreted to apply only to the impairment of the availability or integrity of documents, etc., for use in official proceedings — rather than to any obstruction of an official proceeding in any manner.”
The motion also highlighted the Supreme Court’s warning that a broad reading of the Sarbanes Oxley Act would effectively “criminalize a broad swath of prosaic conduct, exposing activists and lobbyists alike to decades in prison” and that a peaceful protestor could conceivably be charged under the law and “face a 20-year sentence.”
“The federal’ conspiracy against rights’ statute … was enacted in 1870 primarily to stop the Ku Klux Klan’s rampant violations of African Americans’ civil rights,” the legal document declared.
The motion to dismiss noted that the statute prohibits “two or more persons” from “conspir[ing] to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person … in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”
The Thomas More Society maintains that a DOJ trial attorney was misguided in suggesting that the “conspiracy against rights” statute should be applied to FACE Act violations because they “are often planned and coordinated offenses that involve more than one subject.”
Prosecuting FACE Act violations under the “conspiracy against rights” statute elevates all violations committed from felonies to misdemeanors. The motion to dismiss characterized this use of the statute as running afoul of the penalties clearly laid out by the U.S. Congress in the law, which made perfectly clear that first-time nonviolent offenders would face misdemeanor charges as opposed to felony charges.
If convicted under the “conspiracy against rights” statute, Gallagher and other defendants could face up to 10 years in prison and/or a fine. The defendants’ “sentencing will take place at a later date.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
