Biography
Sister Jogues Egan was a Roman Catholic nun and educator jailed for civil contempt in 1971 for refusing to testify before the federal grand jury in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania that investigated the Catholic antiwar left — the so-called East Coast Conspiracy to Save Lives, the alleged plot associated with Daniel and Philip Berrigan to raid draft boards and symbolically kidnap national security adviser Henry Kissinger. Egan refused to answer the grand jury questions on the ground that they were derived from illegal government wiretapping and electronic surveillance. Held in contempt by the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania and ordered jailed until she testified or the grand jury expired, she carried her challenge to the Supreme Court, which in Gelbard v. United States (1972) upheld the right of grand jury witnesses to refuse to answer questions based on unlawful surveillance. Her resistance, alongside fellow Catholic activist Anne Walsh, made her a prominent figure of Catholic antiwar grand jury resistance.
