D. A. Drops Case Against 3 Protesters

Charges were dropped Monday against three anti-nuclear demonstrators accused of malicious mischief and vandalism for painting silhouettes on a Seal Beach street, according to John R. Zitny, attorney for the defendants.

Last week, two of the defendants had been sentenced to probation and one, Marion Pack of Norco, to five days in jail for blocking a public roadway during a demonstration at the Winter Conference of Aerospace and Electronic Systems (Wincon) in Costa Mesa last February.

At a pretrial conference Monday with a representative of the county district attorney’s office at West Orange County Municipal Court in Westminster, the defense attorney said, the three anti-war activists agreed to what is called a “civil compromise.” In exchange for having the charges dropped, Richard Hamel of Santa Ana, Elizabeth Crawford of Santa Ana and Pack, who is the executive director of the Orange County Alliance for Survival chapter, agreed to pay the city $125 in cleanup costs and signed a statement before Judge William L. Mock that said Seal Beach police had a reasonable suspicion to arrest them as they were painting last Aug. 6.

The three, along with a teen-age boy who was not charged, were arrested about 2 a.m. as they whitewashed silhouettes onto the street to illustrate the horrors of a nuclear holocaust, Hamel said.

Hamel said the shadows, painted with a chalk-like substance, were cleaned up a few hours after their arrest.