Biography
Sister Mary Dennis Lentsch crossed the line at Fort Benning, Georgia during an SOA Watch vigil. Sentenced to 6 months. Catholic nun.
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.
In a letter dated July 8, 2011 from Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Lentsch described POD E10’s four-person cells opening onto a shared day room where meals were eaten. She reported one hour of optional recreation daily, no email or incoming telephone calls, expensive outgoing calls and visits through Plexiglas. These are her historical first-person descriptions of conditions at that time; the letter does not establish a new exact admission or release day. Contemporary source.
Contemporary reports of the May 11, 2011 Y-12 trial describe a federal jury trespass conviction arising from the July 5, 2010 action in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Judge Bruce Guyton presided, and Jeff Theodore and Melissa Milliken acted for the prosecution. This account does not place Mary Dennis Lentsch among the seven newly remanded defendants.
Sources: The Nuclear Resister, report 886; The Nuclear Resister, report 887; The Nuclear Resister, report 889.
Two periods in custody for the Y-12 prosecution
The organizers’ updated chronology identifies Mary Dennis Lentsch among those jailed July 5, 2010 and released July 6. It records that she reported to prison June 21, 2011 and was sentenced to time served and physically released September 21. The two periods total ninety-three days between the recorded dates; the interval when she was free is excluded. Organizers’ updated chronology. Contemporary sentencing account.
