Showdown at the March for Life & ND 88 Update
Posted by Thomas More Society (January 26, 2010 at 10:03 am)
Fr. Jenkins, president of Notre Dame who joined the Notre Dame delegation to the March for Life, held last Friday in Washington, D.C., came face to face with large banners urging him to “Free the ND88″ and many thousands of leaflets also calling out for his taking steps to end criminal prosecutions of the “ND88.”
Pro-Choice President at a Catholic University
These are 88 pro-lifers who peaceably bore witness to the sanctity of life last May, 2009, by entering upon Notre Dame’s famous campus just outside South Bend, Indiana, in a solemn, prayerful procession intended to counterbalance the anti-life message bound up with this Catholic university’s decision to invite pro-abortion president Obama to give the Commencement address to graduating students last May.
Notre Dame also saw fit to bestow an honorary doctor of laws degree on the president, whose Administration already had marked him as the most pro-abortion leader in our nation’s history. Indeed, the actual Commencement ceremony was utterly adulatory toward the president, without a word of dissent or opposition to his pro-abortion record, let alone to his pro-abortion agenda — an agenda that now includes a health care proposal that would negate the Hyde Amendment and usher in an era of tax-supported abortions, thereby assuring a vast expansion of abortion in the U.S., far from the touted net reduction in abortions that Mr. Obama had promised to work for as president during his run for office.
The statue of Our Lady, “Notre Dame,” who stands atop of the university’s famous Golden Dome and crowns its Main Building, might have wept real tears when the president was greeted with rousing applause during his nationally televised graduation speech when he advocated “stem cell research,” without distinguishing between embryonic stem cell research, which destroys innocent human lives but which his Administration now promotes, on one hand, and adult stem cell research, which pro-lifers support, which has proven to yield tangible medically successful results, and which does not harm or destroy any human lives.
Pro-Lifers Arrested for Peaceful, Prayerful Witness
It was mainly during the days leading up to the Commencement when those 88 pro-lifers, who were bearing a cross and/or praying the rosary and not causing any disturbance whatsoever, suddenly found themselves halted by campus security police and were then arrested and hauled off to jail in handcuffs.
This arrest and jailing of peaceful and prayerful pro-lifers at Notre Dame, which astounded so many Catholics and others around the entire nation, was done at the behest and direction Notre Dame officials. Its security police are invested with the same state power to make arrests as are city and state troopers in Indiana.
Based on Notre Dame’s complaints that its property rights were infringed, criminal trespass charges were brought against all these defendants, many of whom hailed from out of town and had to come back to South Band weeks or months later to enter pleas of not guilty and to demand jury trials. If convicted of these charges, each of the defendants could be jailed as well as fined up to several thousand dollars.
Tom Dixon Takes up the Cause of the ND 88
A heroic Notre Dame alumnus and lawyer, Tom Dixon of South Bend, answered the plight of these pro-life activists and came to the jail to help them bond out and then agreed to appear to defend almost all of them—88 in all!—in court.
Our Thomas More Society has joined with Tom to underwrite his and co-counsel’s defense efforts and to provide him with support, including modest financial underwriting of his stalwart efforts in the tradition of our own namesake, St. Thomas More who stood up for principle at great personal risk and expense.
In the seven months since the arrests, much already has taken place. All the so-called “ND88″ cases have been consolidated before a single trial judge, the Hon. Jenny Pitts Manier whose court is in Mishawaka, Indiana, adjacent to South Bend.
New Details About Judge Manier Come to Light
But because Judge Manier’s husband proved to be a member himself of the Notre Dame faculty (emeritus, we’re told) and also had been an outspoken critic of Catholic teachings on abortion as well as other issues, because of her prior pro-abortion rulings in another case, and for other compelling reasons, Dixon filed a motion asking the judge to recuse herself as either biased and as appearing to be biased against the defense.
Judge Manier refused, and then refused to reconsider her ruling. But she then certified her refusal to step down from the case for appeal. When appeals were timely filed, the judge then announced that she was voluntarily recusing herself, which took place just a couple of weeks ago.
All these pending jury cases now have been returned to the chief judge of St. Joseph County, Indiana for reassignment to another judge. When that happens, presumably the new trial judge will proceed to hear pending motions for 1) taking of depositions from Notre Dame officials to find out what orders were given to campus security police, and by whom — orders that apparently required them to arrest pro-life demonstrators on campus but to tolerate any pro-Obama advocacy (including t-shirts and signs, whereas pro-lifers carrying signs were told they had to leave campus or face arrest, even if invited to be there by students or professors), and 2) dismissing the trespass cases on various legal grounds, including inter alia, on account of the campus police—acting as state-empowered law enforcers—engaging in “viewpoint discrimination” in violation of the ND88’s 1st amendment rights, namely, by suppressing pro-life speech while ignoring or supporting pro-Obama speech.
Possibilities for the Future
If the charges are not dismissed, then a series of jury trials will follow. The ND88 defendants including such well-known pro-life figures as Miss Norma McCorvey, the “Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision legalizing the current regime of “abortion on demand,” which those participating in the March for Life want to see overturned, Alan Keyes, who ran against president Obama for the U.S. Senate in Illinois and who also ran for president, and Fr. Norman Weslin, now over 80 years of age who has dedicated his priesthood to ending legal abortion and who has demonstrated for years, saving many innocent lives in Omaha at the abortion facility operated by notorious Dr. Carhart, infamous for his use and defense of the brutal partial birth abortion technique, now banned by federal law with the approval of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Our Thomas More Society’s president and chief counsel, Tom Brejcha, published an Open Letter to Fr. Jenkins in the Washington Examiner, urging him to intercede with the St. Joseph County prosecutor and seek the dismissal of these trespass charges.
No doubt such an intercessory request would be honored as it is Notre Dame’s own alleged property rights that are at stake in the cases and its own security police are the complaining witnesses without whose testimony none of the cases could go forward.
Notre Dame Ignores the Pleas of the Pro-Life Community
Unfortunately, Notre Dame so far has ignored all requests that the charges be dropped, claiming through its publicity officers that this somehow is beyond its power—a disingenuous response, given that the cases could not continue but for Notre Dame’s ongoing involvement and support.
One or more folks reportedly approached Fr. Jenkins at the March for Life and conveyed this plea for dropping the charges in person. His only response, so far as we’re told, has been to say, “Thank you,” upon which he would smile and turn away.
TMS Hopeful for a Favorable Outcome
We bear no ill will toward Notre Dame. Indeed, both Tom Brejcha and Peter Breen, Executive Director and Legal Counsel of Thomas More Society, are Notre Dame alumni. But we urgently repeat our plea that Notre Dame do the right thing, which is in its best interest as well as in furtherance of the sanctity of all human life, from conception until natural death, and back off from any further enforcement of these criminal charges against those whose only “crime” was to speak out in an entirely peaceable, nonviolent manner in support of the paramount, preeminent value of life.
Pending such a favorable action on the part of the university, for which we ardently still hope, we will do all that we can to support the ongoing effort to defend the ND88! We will report all new deveopments on this website.