Pictured above are the three anti-nuclear weapons protesters who broke into the Y-12 National Security Complex on July 28. From left, they are Michael Walli, Megan Rice, and Greg Boertje-Obed.
Note: This story was last updated at 9:47 a.m. April 29.
Federal prosecutors have asked the U.S. District Court in Knoxville to dismiss one of the charges against the three anti-nuclear weapons activists accused of breaking into the Y-12 National Security Complex in July and splashing blood and spray-painting slogans on a uranium storage building.
A motion filed on Thursday said the United States has determined that it is unable to establish jurisdiction for that charge, one of three faced by the defendants: Greg Boertje-Obed, Megan Rice, and Michael Walli. That charge alleges that the trio destroyed and injured, and attempted to destroy and injure, Y-12 property.
The defendants face a separate charge of injuring and committing a depredation against U.S. property with damage exceeding $1,000. They are also accused of injuring, destroying, and contaminating national defense premises with the intent to injure, interfere with, and obstruct the national defense. The last charge, filed against the protesters in December and sometimes referred to as a sabotage charge, is generally considered the most serious, and it carries a potential prison sentence of up to 20 years.
An earlier trespassing charge that had been filed in August was dropped when the sabotage charge was added in a new indictment in December. The trespassing charge had been part of a trio of charges that also included property depredation and attempting to injure federal property. Those charges carried possible prison sentences of up to 16 years.
The new charges filed in December did not include the previous trespassing charge but added the sabotage charge, and they carried total prison sentences of up to 35 years.
Boertje-Obed, Rice, and Walli are accused of cutting through three fences in Y-12’s high-security Protected Area before dawn on July 28 and vandalizing the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility, where most of the nation’s bomb-grade uranium is stored. They have a May 7 trial in U.S. District Court in Knoxville.
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