Biography
Sister Megan Gillespie Rice SHCJ was an American Roman Catholic nun of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, a missionary teacher who spent four decades teaching children in Nigeria and Ghana, and after returning to the United States in the 2000s became a full-time anti-nuclear activist with the Nevada Desert Experience and the Plowshares movement. She had been arrested at the Nevada Test Site, the U.S. Army School of the Americas, and elsewhere more than forty times by her seventies.
In the early hours of July 28, 2012 — the day before the Hiroshima anniversary — she, Vietnam veteran Michael Walli (then 63), and former U.S. Army officer Greg Boertje-Obed (then 57), all three Catholic peace activists, cut through three perimeter fences and walked into the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Y-12 is one of the United States' most heavily guarded weapons-grade uranium storage facilities. They reached the wall of the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility, hung peace banners, splashed human blood on the walls, painted slogans, and read a statement aloud while waiting for security to arrive. The action, which exposed catastrophic security failures at the facility, became known as the Transform Now Plowshares.
The three were charged with sabotage and depredation of government property. On May 9, 2013 a federal jury in Knoxville convicted them on both counts. On February 18, 2014, U.S. District Judge Amul Thapar sentenced Rice — then 84 years old — to 35 months in federal prison. On May 8, 2015, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the sabotage conviction and ordered the three released for time served on the lesser depredation count. Sister Megan was freed after roughly two years in federal custody. She died on October 10, 2021 at age 91.
The Paschal 2023 Catholic Peace Fellowship Philadelphia newsletter reports that Rice died in October 2021 at her religious community house in Rosemont, near Philadelphia. This adds the reported place and context while preserving the separately established exact death date. Its rounded two-year imprisonment account does not replace the individual case history. Source: https://www.cpfphila.com/ARTICLES/2023_May/2023-05-Paschal-CPF-Newsletter.pdf#page=9
Missing initial detention review October 13, 2026: Original Nuclear Resister issue 167, page 1, rendered and visually inspected, confirms July 28, 2012 immediate jail booking. The original NCR follow-up explicitly identifies August 3 release for Rice and Walli. The initial July-August detention is now recorded separately rather than extending the later post-verdict imprisonment backwards through the period on bail.
The April 27, 1998 petition by clemency counsel Debra K. Hannula places this defendant among the January 1998 Fort Benning illegal-re-entry convictions before Judge Elliott, carrying six months and a $3,000 fine. Its January 22 trial/sentencing account differs by one day from an earlier January 21 news report, so the new sentencing field uses month precision rather than choosing an unresolved day. The individual biography confirms March 23, 1998 prison entry. The biography describes her science and mathematics teaching in Nigeria and pastoral work in Syracuse after returning to the United States. These records concern a request for clemency; they do not establish that a pardon or commutation was granted.
Clinton Presidential Library, individual biography PDF page 43; petition pages 27–32.
The issue reports that Megan Rice entered a not-guilty plea at the August 2, 2012 initial Transform Now Plowshares hearing before Magistrate Clifford Shirley. Rice and Michael Walli were released the following day; these were pretrial proceedings, distinct from their later sentencing.
The September 15, 2015 Transform Now Plowshares report describes Judge Amul Thapar’s resentencing of Megan Rice, Greg Boertje-Obed and Michael Walli in the remaining depredation-of-property case after the sabotage conviction was overturned and the three were released from prison in May. Each received two years of “unsupervised” supervised probation, with three conditions: commit no local, state or federal crime; enter no U.S. nuclear facility; and report any arrest to the probation officer. The judge upheld the reported $52,000 restitution demand for the action, not an individually allocated new fine. These probation conditions are not an additional period of imprisonment. Contemporary resentencing report.
The April 30, 2013 report says Judge Amul Thapar excluded the necessity defense, Nuremberg principles, First Amendment arguments and testimony about religious or other good motives before the Transform Now Plowshares trial. He permitted testimony about intent, an element of the sabotage allegation. It also reports former Attorney General Ramsey Clark’s April 23 testimony that nuclear-weapons production violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and his distinction between treaty obligations and international law. These are reported pretrial rulings and testimony, not a custody interval or later trial result.
The October 6, 2013 Transform Now Plowshares support update reports that Judge Amul Thapar denied the Rule 29 motion concerning the sabotage conviction and denied the motion for a new trial on October 1. The report discussed a prospective January 28, 2014 sentencing and possible guideline ranges; those forecasts are not substituted for Megan Rice’s later actual sentencing or counted as time served. These proceedings belong to her already recorded prosecution.
Sources: The Nuclear Resister, source report 622.
The May 15, 2015 Transform Now Plowshares update reports that the Sixth Circuit ordered Megan Rice and the other two defendants released on their own recognizance just after 7 p.m. Attorney Bill Quigley relayed the order after the government said it would not oppose release pending resentencing or seek additional imprisonment beyond time already served. This evening report explicitly awaited confirmation of physical release; it does not establish a May 15 discharge. The separately documented May 16 actual release remains the custody endpoint, and no overlapping case or additional imprisonment is created. The Nuclear Resister, May 15, 2015.
The January 27, 2011 account and reproduced Las Vegas Sun report individually identify this participant among the Creech 14 arrested on April 9, 2009. Judge William Jansen found all fourteen guilty of trespass and imposed time served on January 27, 2011. The statements below the article carry an inconsistent July 27, 2010 heading; the dated report and reproduced contemporary news account establish the January 2011 disposition. Time served is the imposed disposition, without a measured number of days or a claim of continuous custody from arrest to sentencing. Contemporary source.
The support appeal published under a May 27, 2013 heading places Megan Rice at Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, and lists the local historical register number 22100. Its body anticipates a January 28, 2014 sentencing date and appears to have been updated after publication, so the heading does not independently date that location to May 27. The local register number is not a replacement for a federal Bureau of Prisons identifier. The appeal identifies Judge Amul R. Thapar and reports the revocation of pretrial release after the May jury verdict. The anticipated hearing is not the actual sentencing date.
Sources: https://www.nukeresister.org/2013/05/27/support-needed-for-transform-now-plowshares-resisters/
The May 15, 2013 account describes the progression from the original misdemeanor trespass accusation to August 2012 property-damage charges and a December 4, 2012 superseding sabotage indictment. It also reports the exclusion of proposed necessity, international-law and nuclear-weapons justification evidence at trial. These are historical procedural descriptions; the article’s internally inconsistent action and initial-release dates do not replace the separately established individual custody endpoints.
Additional source: Contemporary procedural account.
An April 25, 2013 case update reports that prosecutors dismissed Count Two, the separate property-destruction charge under 18 U.S.C. sections 1363 and 2, before the Transform Now Plowshares trial. The remaining trial charges were depredation of government property and sabotage. Contemporary source.
The contemporary May 2013 trial package names Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jeff Theodore and Melissa Kirby as prosecutors before Judge Amul Thapar. It describes the jury conviction, immediate remand and the subsequent May 10 order denying release pending sentencing. The September 23 sentencing mentioned in that report was then a future hearing date. Contemporary source.
The report of Rice’s trial testimony describes her radiation-biology studies in a master’s program at Boston College and her work teaching science and building schools in Africa. Contemporary source.
In her December 2014 letters from Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, Rice described prison routines and collective holiday life. Her July 28 letter similarly placed her in Brooklyn, Greg Boertje-Obed at Leavenworth and Michael Walli at McKean. Her March 2, 2014 letter individually described transfers from Knoxville to Irwin County on May 24, 2013, back to Knoxville on January 14, 2014, and return to Irwin on February 28. These were movements within the ongoing prosecution custody, not physical releases or additional imprisonment episodes. The later Brooklyn transfer day is not supplied.
Sources: The Nuclear Resister report 511; The Nuclear Resister report 545; The Nuclear Resister report 579.
