A-Test Protest Charges Dismissed
Nye County, Nevada, officials have dropped trespass charges against actor Martin Sheen, astronomer Carl Sagan and 137 other anti-nuclear protesters arrested at the Nevada Test Site last year, thus thwarting plans by the defendants to organize a full-scale, big-name, anti-nuclear publicity assault around the trial.
The protesters had been scheduled to be tried this week in Beatty, 150 miles north of Las Vegas.
Former U.S. Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark had been retained to lead the defense and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Elie Wiesel had videotaped a statement to be used as evidence. An accompanying fund-raising event promised such guests as actress Betty Thomas of the television show “Hill Street Blues” and veteran activist Daniel Ellsberg, who disclosed the Pentagon Papers in 1971.
“They weren’t interested in putting on a defense,” Nye County Dist. Atty. Phil Dunleavy said Friday. “They wanted to put on a show. I wasn’t interested.”
‘Evidentiary Problems’
Dunleavy said he decided to drop the charges because of “evidentiary problems”--a paper work mix-up in arrest records.
The defendants were part of a larger group of 500 protesters who gathered near Beatty to demonstrate against an American underground nuclear test at the nearby Nevada Test Site.
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