Nun will continue fighting nukes, at risk of returning to prison

A year and a half in federal prison hasn't dampened Sister Jackie Hudson's defiant attitude.

The 70-year-old Roman Catholic nun, released from prison Friday, returned to Washington state yesterday, walking off a plane at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and into a potential new standoff with federal authorities over her continued protests of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Sister Hudson refuses to pay court-ordered restitution stemming from a theatrical protest in 2002 at a nuclear-missile silo that landed her and two other nuns behind bars and made her a cause célèbre among anti-nuclear-weapons activists.

"I refuse to pay money to this morally bereft government which presently spends over $1 billion a day to slaughter or in planning the slaughter of millions of innocent persons," Sister Hudson wrote in a recent letter. "I am complicit enough by claiming citizenship in this nation."

Sister Hudson, who lived in Bremerton before her arrest, was sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison, a $200 special assessment and $3,080.04 in restitution, plus three years of supervised release. Her time in federal prison was reduced for good behavior and for the months she had spent in custody awaiting trial.

Activists have donated more than $112,000 in time and money to various social causes in what they call a replacement for the fine, but no court has said it would accept that as payment, Sister Hudson said yesterday, as she stood with a small group of supporters who met her at the airport.

The sister's appearance in Washington could also trigger a response from federal officials. She is supposed to be serving probation in Colorado and must report to a federal probation official there today.

Sister Hudson said prison officials told her she needed to appear in person, but the court order says only that she must "notify" the probation officer. She plans to call from Bremerton today.

"Why not go home, celebrate with friends and at least spend some time with people that I love and people that I know love me before I go back to prison?" Sister Hudson said.

The potential conflict is the latest in Sister Hudson's long campaign against U.S. nuclear policy. In Bremerton, where she moved in 1993, she worked with the Poulsbo-based Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, an anti-nuclear-weapons group.

In October 2002, Sister Hudson, Sister Carol Gilbert and Sister Ardeth Platte, wearing white coveralls, cut through a chain-link fence surrounding a Minuteman III missile silo in eastern Colorado.

The three banged with hammers on the silo cover and a rail line connected to it, and they poured bottles of their own blood on the silo, then prayed and sang hymns until they were arrested.

Federal prosecutors responded with felony charges of damaging government property and obstructing national defense, winning convictions against the three nuns, who are from the Dominican order. The other two nuns remain in federal prison.

Federal officials at the time said the three breached a sensitive security site during a time of war.

"It is our hope that this prosecution and conviction serves as a deterrent not only to these defendants, but to others inclined to bypass peaceful and lawful means of protest to commit similar crimes," then-U.S. Attorney John Suthers said after the trial, according to a previous Seattle Times story.

An official at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Colorado could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Sister Hudson's supporters complained that prosecutors were overzealous, capitalizing on heightened public anxiety after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Her conviction is under appeal in the federal 10th Circuit Court.Warren Cornwall: 206-464-2311 or wcornwall@seattletimes.com