Arrest, jail, and even probation aren’t enough to keep Dennis Apel from protesting against the use of nuclear weapons around the world.
On March 17, a federal judge sentenced Apel to six months of supervised probation and 200 hours of community service.
Apel made his appearance at the federal bankruptcy court in Santa Barbara, where he said there is a special room to handle civilian criminal cases originating from Vandenberg Air Force Base. Apel has staged his protests at VAFB for nearly two decades.
In that time, he’s been arrested numerous times for his acts of civil disobedience. He’s also taken his case to the U.S. Supreme Court twice without much consequence, but he continues to be arrested and cited for trespassing.
This time, Apel’s sentence was for his citation following a protest held at VAFB on Aug. 8, 2015, which marked the 70th anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Nagasaki, effectively ending WWII.
According to Apel, federal prosecutor Sharon McCaslin, with whom Apel’s been in court numerous times in the past, was asking for a maximum sentence of six months in jail.
Even before the sentence was handed down, Apel told the judge that he wasn’t going to cooperate.
As far as the community service goes, Apel said the judge won’t allow him to do any service related to his job, which is charity work in Guadalupe.
“I suspect if we just do the community service we do all week long anyway, she doesn’t consider it a punishment,” Apel told the Sun.
Apel has to appear on April 21, when he must answer for the probation as well as pay a $35 mandatory court fee—with $25 of it going to the Central Violations Bureau and the other $10 going toward a special assessment fee that goes into a victims’ fund, according McCaslin.
The consequence of not obeying the sentence is unclear, Apel said, but he remains adamant.
When contacted, McCaslin told the Sun that she couldn’t talk about the case until after the next court date.
This article appears in Mar 24-31, 2016.
