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SPEAKER 1: I wanted to read you something. This is from the Pioneer Press. A mistrial was declared because some of your friends had heard the members of the jury talking. Ken Tilsen, the attorney, said the notes taken included such comments by the jurors in reference to the defendants as, quote, "a radical minority," and that the trial was a, quote, "waste of taxpayers' money."

The notes also had the juror stating that the defendants were no good, and another that the three sat there smirking. They should be crying. Tilsen said that according to one note, one juror voiced the opinion that people like the defendants should be over in some Communist country where they wouldn't be given fair trials. How were you feeling when you heard about this stuff?

SPEAKER 2: Well, it's-- we thought it was a great victory that to getting this mistrial showed how prejudiced we were. I mean, we were not allowed to interview the jurors beforehand. It was only Judge Devitt who interviewed the jurors as to prejudice. And he just asked them stupid, inane questions. I mean, he was obviously stacking the jury, this great learned judge.

I don't think we were smirking. We were kind of-- the funny thing is that we happened to run into a couple of the jurors in a bar afterwards in the basement of where Ken Tilsen had his office. And these are two who had-- one of them had a son who was just about draft age. They might have hung on for a hung jury and all that, but gosh, we didn't know about that. We pushed for it.

I mean, they were talking about, and he had hair down to his shoulders. Oh, that was me. I had very long hair back then. And so we knew that they were just automatically at the visceral, negative response to us from what we heard. But we might have actually won. But then we had another trial. And the jury was even worse. And they barely even got out of the room before they came back and said we were all guilty and all that.

It was-- I mean, none of us thought that the Soviet Union was any better. I mean, we didn't think that the only two choices were between the United States or the Soviet Union, and that we thought that certainly we had the duty to try and make things better here and to stop this war. We were killing all these people.

But it wasn't until the third trial with Judge Philip Neville, where he allowed in all this testimony. This is the first time where, like, Daniel Ellsberg, who later released the Pentagon files-- he tried to testify. And he later said part of the reason was because he couldn't testify. He couldn't talk about what he wanted to, which led him to release these Pentagon trials.

And we had all these people who would testify about the devastating effect of Agent Orange. All these Vietnam veterans talked about the atrocities that they had been part of. And we had Staughton Lynd, historian, talked about the role of civil disobedience and changing American society, the abolitionists, against slavery, and certainly the American revolution, the colonists, whatever.

All these historical events like that and put what we did in that context-- and we tried to do it in a nonviolent direct action way. But it's so funny. I mean, this is, like, the first time that had been allowed into the trial. And then at very end, the judge said, well, forget all that. You didn't hear it. I let it in. That's all I'm going to do. You can't consider that when you bring back your verdict.

They came back. And this guy, who was chairing the jury who had-- I mean, he was crying and apologizing for having been in the Korean War and this or that. I mean, they had been so moved and so wanting to let people free because they saw the righteousness of what we were doing, but they didn't have any moral or actually legal hook. They didn't have the legal hook that they could tie it to. I mean, they didn't know.

And our lawyers couldn't tell them, of course, that the jury does have a certain amount of supremacy. And ever since the days in England where if they think the government or the king is doing wrong, that the jury can nullify that by going against exactly what the law is. So we were all sentenced and got five years in jail except for one person who had pled guilty.

SPEAKER 1: When you heard that sentence, what was going through your mind?

SPEAKER 2: Well, it rocked me back on my heels a little bit. Ooh, I thought-- and, of course, you think of prison, Cool Hand Luke and all these kind of prison movies you've seen and I haven't seen or heard. And if you don't know people who have gone to prison particularly well-- I remember once telling Daniel Ellsberg, well, it was like this black void and just jump off into it, and you don't know where you're going to land, but here it goes.

So after we lost on appeals, we did turn ourselves in. And I cut my long hair before I went to a jail just so they went to have the satisfaction of doing that. And we were scattered, went to a prison across the country. We were so notorious. And the prison here in Minnesota at Sandstone-- the only one we had then. Now we have three federal prisons-- wouldn't accept any of us because we were so notorious and so well-known. Actually, there was so much local support for us, too.

So I was sent to Springfield, Missouri, US Medical Center for Federal Prisoners. And there was some draft resisters there. I started to meet them at-- it was about a thousand guys there, about six or seven draftees there.

So soon, they started flooding in, especially from Minnesota, because like Minnesota's one of the centers of draft resistance, that during this time period, even though they prosecuted only a small fraction of those who were in violation of the draft, there was still more than-- at times, more than 50% of all the federal indictments were for selective service violations.

This is because of the enormous amount of work that we'd done through the Twin Cities Draft Information Center, putting out tons and tons and tons of information, counseling hundred people a week every morning, going down to the induction center, leafleting guys, if you go in the military, don't let them push you around. But if you think that maybe you want to change your mind, we'll give you counseling and help you out, and all that.

So we had an enormous impact on this area. And so that's why there was a lot of support for us. And it was a good moral and support too while you're in prison. Even though I tell people, it's good to have community support, but you got to be strong in yourself and know what you're doing, and because you're the one that's going to have to do that time.