Judi Bari - The Car Bombing and Its Aftermath - Aftermath - Prolonged Civil Rights Trial

Prolonged Civil Rights Trial

Bari and Cherney filed a federal civil rights suit claiming that the FBI and police officers falsely arrested the pair and attempted to frame them as terrorists so as to discredit their political organizing in defense of the redwood forests.

In 1997, the law enforcement officers named in the civil rights suit were sued for conspiracy to violate Bari and Cherney's First and Fourth Amendment rights. On 15 October 1997, Federal judge Claudia Wilken dismissed FBI supervisor Richard Wallace Held, who had been prominent in the agency's COINTELPRO effort, from the case on the grounds that he had no duty to oversee the daily duties of his subordinate agents.

In 2002, a jury in their federal civil lawsuit found that Bari's and Cherney's civil rights had been violated. As a result of the jury's verdict, three FBI agents and three Oakland Police officers were ordered to pay a total of $4.4 million to Cherney and to Bari's estate. The award was a response to the defendants' violation of the plaintiffs' First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, and for the defendants' various unlawful acts, including unlawful search and seizure in violation of the plaintiff's Fourth Amendment rights. At trial the FBI and the Oakland Police pointed fingers at each other.

"Oakland investigators testified that they relied almost exclusively on the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism unit in San Francisco for advice on how to handle the case. But the F.B.I. agents denied misleading the investigators into believing that Ms. Bari and Mr. Cherney were violence-prone radicals who were probably guilty of transporting the bomb."

While neither would admit wrongdoing, the jury found both liable finding "both agencies admitted they had amassed intelligence on the couple before the bombing." This evidence supported the jury's finding that both the FBI and the Oakland police persecuted Bari and Cherney for being bombed instead of trying to find the true perpetrators in order to discredit and sabotage Earth First! and the upcoming Redwood Summer, thereby violating their First Amendment rights and justifying the large award. Simply, instead of looking for the actual terrorists, they persecuted the victims of that terror because of their political activism.

"Investigators were lying so much it was insulting.... I'm surprised that they seriously expected anyone would believe them.... They were evasive. They were arrogant. They were defensive, " said juror Mary Nunn.