Biography
Daniel Joseph Berrigan, S.J., was a Jesuit priest, poet, and organizer against war and nuclear weapons. A member of the Catonsville Nine, he served 18 months in federal prison after the group burned draft records in 1968. On September 9, 1980, Berrigan joined seven other activists in entering General Electric’s missile plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where they hammered on nuclear-warhead nose cones and poured blood on documents. The Plowshares Eight action launched the modern Plowshares movement. After a decade of appeals, the defendants were resentenced in April 1990 to time already served.
The documentary The Berrigans: Devout and Dangerous presents the family’s anti-war and anti-racist organizing through archival footage, interviews and the perspectives of younger family members. Its press kit describes the costs of imprisonment and family separation within that movement. The film’s collective reference to more than 300 arrests is not an individual arrest count or a measure of time served. Source: https://theberrigansmovie.com/assets/stuff/2021/11/BERRIGANS_DEVOUTDANGEROUS_PRESS_KIT.pdf#page=2
Jane Yolen’s September 1972 review records False Gods, Real Men as a Macmillan volume of poems, 111 pages. She describes the poems incorporating news reports and an indictment, and reflecting on draft-file destruction and a journey to Vietnam. These are bibliographic and literary details; poetic scenes are not treated as independent proof of another arrest or a new custody endpoint. Source: https://friendsjournal.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/friendsjournal/wp-content/uploads/emember/downloads/1972/HC12-50522.5.pdf#page=20
Separate July 28–31, 1981 remand during Plowshares Eight appeal
The September 19, 1981 newsletter, original page 3, reports all eight immediately jailed when sentenced July 28. Three days later Daniel Berrigan, Molly Rush and Anne Montgomery were actually released after a Superior Court panel reinstated bond. Thus July 31 is a calendar inference from the explicitly stated three-day interval, and this three-day remand is separate from initial September 1980 detention. Earlier bail gaps must not be counted as continuous custody. The later 1990 resentencing is not this release event.
National No-Nukes Prison Support Collective newsletter No. 7, September 19, 1981, original pages 1–4
Additional individually documented custody
The Griffiss update individually names George Ostensen, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, Shirley Lockwood and Brian Barrett as refusing fines following their January 23, 1986 trespass convictions and actually serving five days in jail. Their Thanksgiving 1985 arrest is not assumed to be continuous imprisonment until January. Exact first admission and actual discharge days are not printed. The convictions and future sentencing of the four re-entry defendants are separate; Suzanne Schmidt paid her fine and is not assigned this five-day stay.
The Nuclear Resister No.38, March 10, 1986, original PDF pages 7.
The Militant individually named Daniel Berrigan, with his brothers Philip and Jerome, among 29 anti-nuclear protesters arrested at the Pentagon on December 28, 1976. Their January 7, 1977 court appearance was continued to January 21. This report does not establish how long Daniel remained in custody after that arrest.
The study identifies James Buckingham as the April 1990 resentencing judge and records time served plus twenty-three months’ probation.
Molly Rush’s first-person reflection dates the opening of the Plowshares Eight trial to February 23, 1981, before Judge Samuel Salus. Frida Berrigan’s separate forty-year account also identifies Salus and describes his refusal to admit the proposed expert testimony on nuclear weapons and international law. This identifies the original trial judge, distinct from Judge James Buckingham at the later April 1990 resentencing already recorded. It does not change the existing case dates, nominal individual sentence, separate jail intervals or actual-custody total.
Sources: Molly Rush, September 9, 2020 reflection; Frida Berrigan, September 8, 2020 account.
Daniel Berrigan was arrested with the Catonsville Nine on May 17, 1968 for burning draft records and later received a three-year sentence for destruction of government property. After going underground, he was captured on August 11, 1970 and returned to custody. John Dear’s account describes his subsequent imprisonment at Danbury and dates his physical release to February 24, 1972; the New York Times obituary independently confirms the August 11 capture. This later stay lasted 562 days. It does not imply continuous imprisonment from the earlier 1968 protest arrest or establish the exact day of his transfer to Danbury. Retrospective descriptions of eighteen months or two years are approximate accounts of that imprisonment, rather than additional stays. The compilation also describes separate protest arrests in October 1967, Rochester in 1992 and at the Intrepid museum in 2006, without precise custody endpoints for those episodes. The Nuclear Resister obituary compilation, including John Dear’s and the New York Times accounts.
The retrospective excerpt from Daniel Berrigan’s Swords Into Plowshares identifies Daniel Berrigan among the Plowshares Eight participants in the September 9, 1980 General Electric action at King of Prussia. Berrigan describes subsequent police-cell confinement and an initial charging phase alleging assault, false imprisonment, reckless endangerment, criminal mischief, terroristic threats, harassment, criminal coercion and unlawful restraint. Those initial allegations are not presented as the final convictions, and the excerpt supplies no complete individual admission-to-release interval.
Sources: Contemporary report.
