Biography
Clare Therese Grady, KBP7 defendant; 12 months federal prison. Clare Grady is an American Catholic peace activist and longtime member of the Catholic Worker and Plowshares movements. She has participated in multiple high-profile acts of civil resistance against war, nuclear arms, and military bases, including the “Saint Patrick’s Day Four” anti-Iraq War protest in 2003.
Grady is best known as a member of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, who in April 2018 entered the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia to protest U.S. nuclear weapons. Prosecutors convicted her and her co-defendants on federal charges in October 2019, and in November 2020 she was sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison; she has been serving her sentence at FPC Alderson in West Virginia.
Outside prison, Grady has worked for many years at a community kitchen in Ithaca, New York, and is married with two daughters.
The November 12, 2019 NYC Anarchist Black Cross compilation reproduces reporting on the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 jury verdict of October 24, 2019: conspiracy, destruction of property on a naval installation, depredation of government property and trespass. It describes the defendants other than Stephen Kelly as free at home awaiting sentencing, while Kelly remained jailed. The reported twenty- or twenty-five-year maximum was a possible penalty, not an imposed term or actual service. Later dispositions remain separately recorded. Source: https://nycabc.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/updates-12-nov-2019-1.pdf#page=2
The same compilation expressly reports that Grady spent six months behind bars in 2006 for the blood-splashing protest at a Lansing, New York recruiting office during the Iraq War. This is actual service in an earlier case, distinct from Kings Bay; exact admission and release days are not supplied. Source: https://nycabc.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/updates-12-nov-2019-1.pdf#page=1
The Paschal 2023 Catholic Peace Fellowship Philadelphia newsletter reports participation in the January 28, 2023 Chestnut Hill College discussion following a screening of The Nuns, The Priests and The Bombs. The profile traces her activity from Griffiss Air Force Base in 1983 through Kings Bay in 2018 and identifies her work at the Loaves & Fishes community kitchen in Ithaca. The retrospective prison references do not establish new custody endpoints. Source: https://www.cpfphila.com/ARTICLES/2023_May/2023-05-Paschal-CPF-Newsletter.pdf#page=8
Initial Hancock custody, October 25, 2012
The Upstate Coalition statement dated October 25, 2012 named Clare Grady among thirteen people still held in jail late that afternoon after a blockade of Hancock Field near Syracuse. The statement reported trespass and disorderly-conduct charges and bail between $250 and $1,000. Four other named participants had already been released on their own recognizance. It does not establish the physical release day for the thirteen still held. This initial October 2012 custody must not be extended through later 2014 sentencing or conflated with other protest cases. No new release date or measured days imprisoned are inferred from this report.
Initial Griffiss custody ended December 12, 1983
The Thanksgiving at Griffiss report individually names Clare Grady among seven resisters who entered Griffiss Air Force Base on Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 1983. All seven were initially held on an Air Force bus, then remained in Syracuse City Jail until their December 12 arraignment, when they were released on their own recognizance. This establishes an initial eighteen-elapsed-day interval, not continuous custody through any later July 1984 sentence or final federal discharge. The next court appearance in January was future and not a release date. All existing later proceedings and endpoints must remain separately preserved.
The Nuclear Resister No22, December 16, 1983, original page 3.
Later Griffiss sentence-era halfway-house custody
The December 9, 1985 Nuclear Resister directory individually lists Claire Grady with the Griffiss Plowshares group and says she had recently transferred to a halfway house in New York City; the Jonah House address is a correspondence contact, not proof that the New York halfway house was in Baltimore. The January 20, 1986 issue individually lists Claire Grady as recently released. These reports establish a later sentence-era custodial phase, separate from the eighteen-day initial November 24–December 12, 1983 Griffiss jail stay. They do not print the first later admission, the prison-to-halfway-house transfer day or the final release day. Halfway-house placement must not be counted as uninterrupted physical-prison days through a guessed final discharge. The Catholic Peace Fellowship’s 2023 organizer biography names Clare Grady and directly connects her 1983 Griffiss action to her later Kings Bay case, supporting the current-profile match without installing the printed Claire variant as an asserted alias.
The Nuclear Resister No.36, December 9, 1985, original page4; The Nuclear Resister No.37, January 20, 1986, original page4; Catholic Peace Fellowship, Paschal2023, original page8.
The contemporary report records immediate admission to custody at sentencing on January 25, 2006.
Paul Elie’s November 2019 account reports that all seven Kings Bay defendants pleaded not guilty at their October 21 trial, arguing that the action sought to prevent nuclear destruction. The jury convicted them three days later. The plea records their position at trial, separately from the verdict and later sentencing.
Paul Elie, The New Yorker, November 19, 2019, reproduced by The Nuclear Resister.
Joe Cosgrove represented Grady at her November 12, 2020 sentencing, where Judge Lisa Godbey Wood imposed one year and one day, three years of supervision and joint restitution. A later interview reproduced with the report says her reporting papers specified February 10; this was a future reporting instruction, not confirmation of admission. In that interview Grady also recalled acquittal of sabotage in the Griffiss prosecution and a two-year property-destruction sentence. Her initial 1983 detention, later prison stay and halfway-house placement remain separate phases.
On August 26, 2019, Judge Lisa Godbey Wood denied the Kings Bay defendants’ pretrial motions to dismiss, including their Religious Freedom Restoration Act defense. The contemporary account reports that the court accepted the sincerity of their religious beliefs and found prosecution burdened their religious exercise, but held that the government’s security interests justified applying the criminal laws. The following day the jury trial was scheduled for October 21. These were pretrial rulings, separate from the later verdict and sentence; they did not establish a new jail admission.
In her oral argument reproduced on August 7, 2019, Grady explicitly identified November 9, 1958 as the day she was born.
Clare Grady’s oral argument, reproduced by The Nuclear Resister.
In the Kings Bay Plowshares’ April 4, 2019 anniversary message, Clare Grady is identified among the four defendants then outside jail under ankle-monitor surveillance while awaiting trial. The statement distinguishes those release restrictions from the physical detention of Steve Kelly, Elizabeth McAlister and Mark Colville in Glynn County Jail. This is a historical pretrial account, not an additional jail term or a current-status statement.
The October 25, 2012 Hancock report individually names Clare Grady among thirteen protesters still being held in jail late that afternoon after arrests at the air base gates and hearings in DeWitt Town Court. All seventeen arrestees were charged with trespass and disorderly conduct and served with protection orders concerning Earl A. Evans; four others were released on their own recognizance. The report does not give this person’s exact release day or a completed custody duration. Bail amounts are not treated as proof of release.
The December 14, 2012 report records Judge Jokl’s December 13 trespass conviction and fifteen-day jail sentence for Clare Grady over the June 28 Hancock action. Her later surrender was prospective, unlike the immediate imprisonment explicitly reported for Ed Kinane and James Ricks. The printed January 11, 2012 surrender date is inconsistent with the report’s December chronology and does not establish an actual admission date.
Clare Grady was physically taken into custody immediately after January 25, 2006 sentencing, as the contemporary February 12 report states. The July 24 follow-up explicitly dates her actual release July 17, 2006. Those independently documented endpoints span 173 elapsed days for this existing St. Patrick’s Four case. Her nominal six-month sentence and a later retrospective account describing six months behind bars are preserved as source context; the exact contemporary endpoints replace the rounded month counter without converting six months into an assumed fixed number of days. The Nuclear Resister No.142, July24,2006, page6. No.140, February12,2006, page1.
Bill Quigley’s report of the August 2, 2018 Kings Bay hearing identifies Stan Baker as the magistrate hearing dismissal motions, Lisa Godbey Wood as the district judge who would ultimately decide them, and Karl Knoche as the assistant U.S. attorney opposing dismissal. Those procedural roles and pending motions are distinct from a later trial verdict or sentencing disposition. Contemporary report, The Nuclear Resister.
The April 2018 report describes the Kings Bay defendants’ April 6 first appearance before Chief Magistrate Jennifer E. Lewis on the initial Georgia state allegations, with bail denied and detention at Camden County Public Safety Complex. This initial state-court phase is distinct from the later federal prosecution; the report’s April 5 arrest account does not resolve every conflicting legacy profile date. Contemporary report, The Nuclear Resister.
The July 23, 2014 Hancock report individually names Clare Grady and reports Trespass and violation of an order of protection, with $10,000 bail. For the five people held on bail, the article gives no later physical discharge date. Brian Hynes participated but was not arrested in this action; no custody is allocated to him from the seven-person roster.
Sources: The Nuclear Resister report 549.
