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David Lucifer
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Scientology critic seeks pardon
« on: 2007-07-08 18:33:16 » |
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source: Religion News Blog
SACRAMENTO - Former Palo Alto engineer Keith Henson’s decade-long battle with the Church of Scientology forced him into bankruptcy, sent him on the lam to Canada to seek political asylum, and recently landed him in a solitary jail cell in Riverside County.
Friday, he asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to set him free.
A 64-year-old longtime computer consultant, Henson has pursued many causes during his life, many outside the mainstream but all of them, family members say, with the intensity of a scientist on the brink of a big breakthrough. In the mid-’70s he helped found the L5 society that was dedicated to creating a space colony where Henson hoped to live someday. He has advocated cryonics, the practice of freezing people with diseases in the hopes of reviving them once a cure is found.
Then Henson set his sights on Scientology. Scanning Internet news groups in the mid-1990s, he was drawn to a page critical of Scientology and quickly became convinced. With typical zeal, Henson set out to expose the religion, which some critics charge operates more like a cult, and things quickly escalated into a nasty, protracted battle.
“People react in different ways to things,” Henson’s wife, Arel Lucas, said. “Some people get angry, other people feel like walking away. He got angry.”
His crusade ultimately led to a misdemeanor conviction and six-month jail sentence - of which he has served about two months - for interfering with the rights of others to practice their religion. Friday, his wife and daughter arrived in Sacramento after a two-day drive that started in Arizona, and delivered a petition to Schwarzenegger’s office seeking a pardon, or short of that, a reduced sentence.
A Schwarzenegger spokesman declined to comment, other than to say the governor would give the petition the same careful consideration he does other such requests.
Henson’s troubles began when he posted on the Internet Scientology documents about its approach to medical treatment. The church, which closely guards its teachings, sued him for copyright infringement. In 1998, after a four-day trial before U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte, Henson was ordered to pay $75,000 to the Religious Technology Center, a wing of the Scientology organization.
“Scientology is evil; its techniques are evil; its practice is a serious threat to the community, medically, morally, and socially; and its adherents are sadly deluded and often mentally ill… (Scientology is) the world’s largest organization of unqualified persons engaged in the practice of dangerous techniques which masquerade as mental therapy.”
- Justice Anderson, Supreme Court of Victoria, Australia, quoted atWhat judges have to say about Scientology
“It’s amazing the trouble you get into for trying to warn the public about health hazards,” Henson told the Mercury News after the verdict. “This was just a loss of a battle in a larger war.”
Indeed it was. The fine forced Henson into bankruptcy, but he wasn’t ready to let go. Henson (who, after more than a decade living in Silicon Valley, moved to Southern California) picketed Scientology organizations around Los Angeles. According to his wife, he was roughed up more than once and was a frequent target of death threats.
The Church of Scientology did not return calls requesting comment.
According to court documents, starting in May 2000 Henson staged daily protests for nearly two months straight outside Golden Era Productions, a Scientology facility in Riverside County that produces promotional materials. Police arrested him July 19 of that year, and prosecutors later alleged that he had threatened to bomb the building.
He was charged with three misdemeanors, two for allegedly making or attempting to make terrorist threats, and one for allegedly interfering with another’s right to exercise civil rights, namely to practice religion.
According to his wife, Henson worked for an explosives company in the 1970s and has experience with pyrotechnics. And he once jokingly suggested online launching a “Cruise missile” at a Scientology building - a reference to actor Tom Cruise, an active church member.
But that’s a far cry, she said, from being a terrorist. “He never had access to weapons of mass destruction or had the ability to launch them,” she said. “He’s not some kind of bomb-throwing, threatening person. He never threatened anyone.”
The jury hung on the two terrorist charges but convicted Henson of interfering with religion, a misdemeanor.
But shortly before his sentencing date in 2001, when he was expecting to be sent to jail for six months, Henson bolted for Canada. According to his wife, he feared that Scientologists would harm him in jail, and so he accepted an invitation from a Canadian friend.
Barely a month later, shopping at a suburban Toronto mall, Henson was surrounded by a police SWAT team and arrested, his wife said, for failing to disclose his criminal status when he crossed the border. After five days in a high-security jail, he was released. The reason: Henson had applied for political asylum, claiming that if forced to return to the United States, he faced injury or even death at the hands of Scientologists.
Henson’s petition for refugee status languished in the Canadian court system for more than four years - a period he spent working for several computer firms and continuing to picket Scientology facilities - before being denied in mid-2005. Knowing he would soon be deported, he slipped quietly back into the United States and stayed with friends for a year before winding up in Prescott, Ariz., in September.
Henson spent the next five months writing, researching, working on his house and - perhaps not surprisingly - posting critiques of Scientology on the Web. He made his writings look as if they were coming from a computer in Canada.
But Henson wouldn’t manage to sidestep the law much longer. In February, he was arrested by undercover officers in Prescott - he believes Scientologists hired investigators to track him down - and later was deported to California to begin the jail sentence he had avoided for so long.
Since May, Henson - described by his wife as a compassionate man with a boisterous laugh who “likes to talk and project his thoughts about the future” - has sat in a solitary jail cell in Riverside County. Lucas said her husband’s troubles are undeserved. He was only trying to protect people, she said, from what he’s convinced is a corrupt organization.
Will Henson continue the fight after his jail term? Moments after leaving the state Capitol on Friday, clutching letters from supporters in her hand, Lucas said she doubts her husband’s crusade will resume anytime soon.
“His lawyer thinks he’s going to have to cool it.”
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Blunderov
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Re:Scientology critic seeks pardon
« Reply #1 on: 2007-07-09 04:24:30 » |
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[Blunderov] I wrote the Gubernator asking that Keith be pardoned. I suggested that unless he was instead convicted of "interfering with a scam created for tax purposes" a grave miscarriage of justice would be the result.
http://www.govmail.ca.gov/
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Hermit
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Re:Scientology critic seeks pardon
« Reply #2 on: 2007-07-09 08:54:08 » |
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Thank-you for the inspiration and the address. Follows as sent. Copy to be mailed.
Dear Sir,
re Keith Henson, engineer, scientist, scholar, author and prisoner of the State of California
I am a scientist with a strong interest in our space programs. I also have a keen interest in free speech issues. I have been following, with keen interest and ever increasing disbelief the blatantly unfair and improper abuse of the legal system to persecute the well known and respected engineer, scientist and popularizer of our space programs and scientific work generally, Keith Henson.
Having known Mr Henson for many years, I can state, with no fear of being contradicted by anybody even middling honest, that he has not, nor ever will be a "threat" to anyone at all, unless you regard sarcasm deployed against the violent, the fraudulent and the dangerous; or the airing of exceedingly dirty linen, established through multiple justice systems; as being threatening. Yet at this moment Mr Henson is in jail while his opponents, people often described by judges as threatening, violent, fraudulent and dangerous, appear to prosper.
As I understand this case, Mr Henson was found guilty of interfering with another's ability to exercise their civil rights (to whit, to practice what has been called by some a religion and by others a monumental conspiracy to defraud.). This is due in large part to his having picketed a *propaganda facility* producing material on behalf of an organization described by numerous judges in the harshest of terms. For example, “Scientology is evil; its techniques are evil; its practice is a serious threat to the community, medically, morally, and socially; and its adherents are sadly deluded and often mentally ill… (Scientology is) the world’s largest organization of unqualified persons engaged in the practice of dangerous techniques which masquerade as mental therapy.” (Justice Anderson, Supreme Court of Victoria, Australia, quoted at What judges have to say about Scientology).
It should be noted that this organization is estimated to have expended vast resources snooping into Mr Henson's life, as well as having made large expenditures on legal costs attempting - far too often successfully - to prevent Mr Henson from describing the workings of, and expressing his opinions of, this organization. While the conspiracy on the part of the Church of Scientology might not have achieved their desire, allegedly repeatedly expressed, to see Mr Henson dead; to the extent that Mr Henson is currently an undischarged bankrupt residing in your prison system, it can be seen that the Scientologists have largely achieved their aims of nullifying Mr Henson. What does this say about the state of our courts? What has happened to the constitutionally protected right of expression? What has happened to the socially responsible individual's duty - let alone right - to express disapproval of such invidious conduct as allegedly engaged in by this organization?
It seems to me that the outcome of this case is clearly a product of prosecutorial excess, combined with a sequence of blatantly partial rulings by a court, strongly influenced by a powerful and wealthy organization out to destroy Mr Henson and chill the thought of opposition in the general public by persuading the judicial system to make an example of Mr Henson. The net effect of these multiple factors meant that the jury had no idea of what the case was about when it found Mr Henson guilty, but they too became a party to the process of turning Mr Henson into a horrible example for those who might wish to express disagreement with what has been adjudicated in many courts as a long history of heinous and deceptive practices by the Scientology organization and those affiliated with it.
I very nearly did not write this letter. I have a family and am seriously concerned at possible repercussions from the Scientology movement, whose grasp we have seen is long, whose memory for slights appears unlimited, and whose quality of balance or sense of restraint seems utterly absent; for attempting to support Mr Henson. The example of the consequences of adopting a principled stand against this organization are already visible to the entire world in the person of Mr Henson. As an intelligent man, Mr Henson must have considered the possibility of retaliation before engaging in his principled stands, and to be quite blunt, I think that having seen Mr Henson being ground under the wheels of the system with Scientology manipulating its levers, I would not have the courage to do what he did; and very nearly did not even have the courage to write this letter in his support. Only the thought that even if my right to free expression has been chilled to the extent that I have frostbite in my fingers, Mr Henson must be worse off, persuaded me to press send.
Mr Henson's attempts to expose the Scientology organization, whether ill-advised or not, have undoubtedly cost him dearly. Due perhaps not least to lack of funds against the effectively unlimited resources of the Scientology movement and its supporters, Mr Henson has been unable to defend himself effectively against the immense forces brought to bear on him. In my opinion, the only way at this stage in which justice can be served in this case: for Mr Henson; for the general public; for the Constitution; and for the many victims of Scientology; is through a pardon at your hands. Your clemency to Keith Henson might cause me to feel a little less frigid myself - and perhaps give those watching you a sense that it is sometimes possible to find a measure of justice in California, be the opponent never so powerful or the time for it ever so late.
Thank-you for your attention
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Blunderov
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Re:Scientology critic seeks pardon
« Reply #3 on: 2007-08-07 15:41:35 » |
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Quote from: Blunderov on 2007-07-09 04:24:30
[Blunderov] I wrote the Gubernator asking that Keith be pardoned. I suggested that unless he was instead convicted of "interfering with a scam created for tax purposes" a grave miscarriage of justice would be the result.
http://www.govmail.ca.gov/
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"This replies to your email concerning the Governor's parole policy.
The Board of Parole Hearings (Board) under law is vested with the primary power to consider suitability for parole. The Governor believes the Board should be given due deference in making these decisions, and at the same time believes the public's safety should never be sacrificed. As such, the Governor may exercise his limited authority to review parole decisions by the Board.
Thank you for emailing to share your views.
Office of Constituent Affairs"
[Blunderov] A bit cryptic, this reply. Doesn't rule out a pardon. Doesn't rule it in either, sadly. (I'm quite surprised to get a reply at all what with me not even being American let alone Californian. )
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