A Santa Barbara federal judge sentenced Dennis Apel to four months in jail on April 21 for a trespassing conviction he received in August 2015 at Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Apel was arrested and cited by Vandenberg security after crossing the green line at the entrance to the base during a demonstration protesting the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima 70 years ago. The green line denotes where protesters can legally demonstrate.
On March 17, Apel received six months of probation and 200 hours of community service, but he refused to comply with the sentence.
Last month, Apel told the Sun that the judge wouldn’t allow him to count his charity work as community service. Apel runs a Catholic Worker house in Guadalupe where he distributes food and clothing to migrant farmworkers in the area.
The sentence was handed down by U.S. Magistrate Judge Louise LaMothe of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
According to Apel, the sentence was four times the amount recommended by U.S. Probation Officer Mia Espinoza, and twice the amount recommended by U.S. Attorney Sharon McCaslin.
In court, Apel describes LaMothe asking Espinoza, then McCaslin, then Apel himself, what his sentence should be. Apel, who was representing himself, said he didn’t want jail time.
Then, according to Apel, LaMothe handed down her sentence without explaining why.
“I don’t know why someone would sentence a person to four months in jail for crossing a green line,” Apel told the Sun, explaining that it was a symbolic act.
When contacted, Espinoza said she couldn’t comment on the case and referred the Sun to the media liaison with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, who didn’t return phone calls before press time.
McCaslin didn’t return messages left by the Sun before press time either. However it’s not her first experience with Apel, who has long protested the federal government.
The two have ended up in court together following Apel’s other arrests at the base, where he’s been protesting the use of nuclear bombs for the past 18 years.
He challenged his past trespassing convictions, eventually arguing his cases before the U.S. Supreme Court twice, although the justices made no rulings on First Amendment grounds and kicked the cases back down to lower courts. UC Irvine law professor Irwin Chemerinsky represented Apel both times.
It’s not Apel’s first time in jail. Several years ago, he spent a combined two months in the San Bernardino County Jail and the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles for a trespassing conviction. The maximum federal sentence for trespassing is six months in jail.
Apel said the jail sentence won’t deter him from protesting at Vandenberg in the future. He’s ordered to report to jail in Los Angeles on May 9.
This article appears in Apr 28 – May 5, 2016.