Prosecutors Seek to Reinstate Charge in Biting of FBI Agent

Federal prosecutors said Thursday that they will ask an appeals court to reinstate a felony assault charge against Kristen Crabtree, the UC San Diego honors student who bit the finger of an FBI agent during a campus protest last spring.

Chief U.S. District Judge Gordon Thompson Jr. dismissed the case last month, scolding the U.S. attorney’s office for filing the charge in the first place. He ruled that it was the agent’s aggressive conduct that provoked the incident.

University officials, meanwhile, are expressing dismay at the discovery that prosecutors used a student summer intern to assist in preparing the case against Crabtree. Asking one student to gather information about another “has a chilling effect on the university,” Joseph Watson, vice chancellor for undergraduate affairs, said Thursday.

Agent Grabbed for Camera

The case stems from an incident May 14. Crabtree was one of about 20 students protesting the participation of FBI, CIA and military recruiters in an on-campus career fair. When she tried to take a photograph of FBI Special Agent Marene Allison, who was manning the FBI’s table, Allison grabbed at the strap of her camera. The two scuffled briefly, and Crabtree bit the agent’s finger. Hours later, she was arrested and briefly jailed on a felony charge of assaulting a federal officer.

Three months later, the case seemed over. At a pretrial hearing Aug. 3, Allison acknowledged that she knew Crabtree had a right to snap her photograph. Allison moved to stop her nonetheless, she said, because Crabtree and a companion were wearing checkered scarves she associated with the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the agent feared they might provoke a confrontation.

“Sometimes the best defense is a good offense,” Allison said.

Thompson, who had expressed skepticism about the charge from the start, said that statement suggested that Allison had assaulted Crabtree, and not the other way around. He criticized the Third College student for responding to the attack by biting Allison. But Thompson saved his harshest criticism for the U.S. attorney’s office, dismissing the case on the grounds that prosecutors had no legal basis for charging Crabtree.

Peter Bowie, chief assistant U.S. attorney, declined Thursday to explain the government’s rationale for appealing the decision, other than to say that prosecutors disagreed with Thompson’s conclusions.

Prosecutors Called ‘Sore Losers’

Crabtree’s lawyer, Barton Sheela III, termed the prosecutors “sore losers” and said they risked reopening unresolved issues--including his claim that the U.S. attorney’s office engaged in “outrageous prosecutorial misconduct”--by appealing Thompson’s ruling.

Crabtree, who would face a three-year prison term and a $250,000 fine if the charges were reinstated, said Thursday that the government appeal was “completely stupid.”

“I think they don’t have a case,” said the student, an anthropology and economics major who became a sought-after campus speaker and the subject of rallies and demonstrations after her arrest. “I think it’s a poor political move on their part, because it’s going to make them look even worse than they already do.”

The government’s use of a student intern to help compile information about Crabtree has stirred further campus protest. School officials learned of the student’s role when he turned in a term paper outlining his involvement in the case.

According to the term paper, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, the student investigated Crabtree’s “personal life,” identifying her friends and studying campus newspapers to determine if they had committed any “deviant acts.”

‘A Feeling of Satisfaction’

The student said he was also assigned to refute Crabtree’s claim that she was taking pictures at the May 14 rally as a representative of the New Indicator, a leftist campus newspaper, and to gather information that would “defame” potential defense witnesses.

“Everything that I found was used as evidence, which gave me a feeling of satisfaction,” the student wrote. “It was in this way that I felt I was playing an important role in the judicial process.”

Peter Irons, an associate professor of political science who advises undergraduate law interns, said it was inappropriate for the U.S. attorney’s office to have assigned a fellow student to probe Crabtree’s background.

“I have very serious doubts about the propriety of any internship employer assigning a student to investigate any other student for any reason,” Irons said.

Watson emphasized that UC administrators planned no action against the student and no protest to the U.S. attorney’s office. But he said it was “poor judgment” for the student to have been placed in a position where his peers might regard him with suspicion and where--because of his knowledge of confidential details--he might be unable to fully participate in campus debate about the controversial case.

A ‘Chilling Effect’

“Both the student . . . and other students in the presence of that student would be limited in the campus dialogue,” Watson said. “I think it has a chilling effect on the university.”

As a result of the incident, a faculty advisory board that reviews undergraduate internships plans to weigh whether explicit guidelines should be developed to police study programs in prosecutorial offices, according to Warren College Provost David Wong, who administers the internship program.

Bowie said it was his understanding that the student intern’s only role was to photocopy newspapers and gather other documentary evidence to assist the Crabtree prosecution.

“If that’s what we’re talking about, I know of absolutely nothing wrong with that,” he said.

Yet the term paper suggests that lawyers in the U.S. attorney’s office were aware of the sensitivity of involving a fellow student in the investigation of the case.

“It was my job to informally investigate the case for the United States Attorney,” the student explained. “I say informally because to introduce the information that I found would have required me to take the stand. The attorneys felt that this would jeopardize me because I, as well as the defendant, go to UCSD.”