The Ten Commandments Monument
In 2003, a federal court judge ordered Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore to remove a monument from the state judicial building which featured the Biblical Ten Commandments, along with an assortment of historical documents which had served as bases for U.S. law. When Moore did not remove the monument, the other eight justices ordered it removed.
Thousands of citizens descended on Montgomery to protest the imminent removal of the Ten Commandments monument. Twenty-two Christian activists were arrested at the monument in the public area of the judicial building during public hours. They were charged with criminal trespass.
The "Montgomery Twenty-Two" retained Jim Zeigler as their attorney. Most later pleaded guilty and all avoided jail.
One of those who decided to fight the charge was Karen Kennedy of Prattville. Mrs. Kennedy was sitting beside the Ten Commandments monument in her wheelchair and connected to her oxygen tank when she was arrested and taken to jail.
She was found guilty by a district judge sitting without a jury. Zeigler filed an appeal for a jury trial in circuit court. Before the appeal came up, Mrs. Kennedy died. Zeigler said, "She has taken her appeal to a higher seat of judgment."
Read more about this topic: Jim Zeigler
Famous quotes containing the words ten, commandments and/or monument:
“We had an inspection today of the brigade. The Twenty-third was pronounced the crack regiment in appearance, ... [but] I could see only six to ten in a company of the old men. They all smiled as I rode by. But as I passed away I couldn’t help dropping a few natural tears. I felt as I did when I saw them mustered in at Camp Chase.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Not for nothing does it say in the Commandments ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any image’ ... Every image is a sin.... When you love someone you leave every possibility open to them, and in spite of all the memories of the past you are ready to be surprised, again and again surprised, at how different they are, how various, not a finished image.”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)
“It is remarkable that the dead lie everywhere under stones.... Why should the monument be so much more enduring than the fame which it is designed to perpetuate,—a stone to a bone? “Here lies,”M”Here lies”;Mwhy do they not sometimes write, There rises? Is it a monument to the body only that is intended?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)