Biography
David Corcoran crossed the line at Fort Benning, Georgia during the November 2000 SOA Watch vigil. Sentenced to 6 months, $1000 fine.
Each year on the November anniversary of the assassination of six Jesuits, their housekeeper, and her daughter at the University of Central America in San Salvador in 1989, peace activists gather at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia, site of the U.S. Army School of the Americas / Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), to commemorate the dead and to call for the school's closure. Hundreds have crossed the line onto the base over four decades of vigils; many have served federal sentences ranging from 30 days to a year for trespass.
Convicted in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia under 18 U.S.C. § 1382 (entering a military reservation) for participating in the School of the Americas Watch (SOA Watch) annual nonviolent civil-disobedience action at Fort Benning, Georgia in November 2000. The action targeted the U.S. Army Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) — formerly the School of the Americas — which had trained Latin American military officers later linked to assassinations, torture, and massacres. Defendants typically received 3 to 6 months in federal custody.
Photo: Felice Cohen-Joppa / The Nuclear Resister. Original-image crop; identified by the source article (central arrested subject wearing the peace-symbol shirt in the report's sole photograph). Source: https://www.nukeresister.org/2012/03/22/no-prison-time-for-david-corcoran/ . Non-free image used at low resolution under this site's educational/memorial fair-use rationale; not an open-license or permission claim.
The January 2012 update reports Corcoran’s guilty plea in late December. The March 22 report identifies him among the thirteen arrested July 5, 2010 at Y-12 and confirms his March 21, 2012 Chicago sentence: 150 hours of community service, a $1,000 fine and two years of probation. His published statement addresses Judge St. Eve and thanks prosecutor Raj; their names are retained only as printed. No prison term was imposed at that hearing. This is distinct from his older School of the Americas cases; no jail admission or release day is inferred.
The Nuclear Resister, January 7, 2012; The Nuclear Resister, March 22, 2012.
