Biography
Brent Betterly was one of the "NATO 3," arrested before the 2012 Chicago NATO summit and acquitted of terrorism after a jury found the case amounted to mob action and possession of an incendiary device rather than a terror plot. Sentenced to six years, he has since completed his sentence.
Brent Vincent Betterly was the third defendant in the NATO 3 prosecution alongside Brian "Jacob" Church and Jared "Jay" Chase (both already in this database). All three were arrested in Chicago on May 16, 2012, three days before the start of the NATO summit, on terrorism conspiracy charges built around an undercover Chicago Police Department sting in which two officers ("Mo" and "Gloves") supplied the activists with materials to make Molotov cocktails. The state's terrorism charges fell apart at trial — a Cook County jury acquitted all three of all terrorism counts in February 2014, but convicted them of misdemeanor mob action and lesser arson-related charges. Betterly was sentenced in May 2014 to six years in Illinois state prison; with day-for-day credit and pretrial credit (he had been held without bond since the May 2012 arrest), he was released in April 2015. The NATO 3 case is widely cited as the first state-level use of an Illinois terrorism statute in a sting operation against political activists.
Historical prisoner identifier
Earth First historical prisoner-support roster identifies Brent Betterly as prisoner 2012-0519001. This is a historical identifier, not confirmation of current custody, institution, or mailing address.
The September 2012 Nuclear Resister reports that Brent Betterly, Brian Church and Jared Chase pleaded not guilty on July 2 to the initial Illinois terrorism-related charges arising from the NATO-summit protests. This is a pretrial account, distinct from the later verdicts and sentences.
The July 2013 NATO-support court account reports that Brent Betterly’s motion to dismiss his charges for alleged misleading grand-jury testimony was denied at the July 9 hearing. The defense allegations and the state’s contrary position are distinct from a finding that testimony was false. A July 23 update moved the prospective trial timetable to early January 2014. These were pretrial proceedings within the existing prosecution, not a new arrest, release, sentence or final trial outcome.
Sources: The Nuclear Resister, source report 638.
The January 22, 2016 contemporary report explicitly states that Brent Betterly was released in April 2015, consistent with the April 16, 2015 endpoints already recorded in his cases. This corrects the biography’s stale 2016 release year without changing any case dates or custody totals. Betterly told the reporter that he and Jared Chase were beaten by guards on arrival at Stateville after sentencing, and described hostile treatment associated with the terrorism allegations despite the terrorism acquittals. These accounts of prison treatment are attributed to Betterly. Contemporary report, The Nuclear Resister.
The contemporary May 2012 NATO-summit report states that Church, Chase and Betterly were each held on $1.5 million bail after the Bridgeport apartment raid. It records the initial allegations of terrorism conspiracy, material support and possession of an incendiary device. This describes the historical pretrial charging and bail position, before the later terrorism acquittals and lesser-count convictions recorded in this profile; it is not an additional imprisonment episode. Contemporary source.
The April 25, 2014 Cook County sentencing account reports Brent Betterly received an imposed term of six years after the NATO protest prosecution. It separately describes the three defendants as having already spent about two years in pretrial custody. The possibility of release after serving fifty percent was a forecast, not evidence of completed service or a discharge date; the approximate pretrial description is not converted into 730 days.
Sources: The Nuclear Resister report 566.
