June 28 was scheduled to be an arraignment for all of the Green Scare defendants on a new superseding indictment. Now it appears that only Jonathan Paul, Daniel McGowan, Nathan Block and Joyanna Zacher are scheduled for it. (note: Briana Waters is not part of the Oregon indictment I am referencing here -- but as a sidenote she has a court hearing in Tacoma on Thursday 6/22). The US Attorney stated in open court at the last hearing that in the next 30 days most of the defendants would be entering pleas -- those pleas have not happened yet and we guess they will be trickled through the court system over the next month or so. We are expecting the unindicted cooperating co-conspirators to also be changing their pleas as well. When a plea happens (formally called a change of plea proceeding), the defendant admits guilt to certain charges in exchange for certain charges being dismissed by the feds at a future sentencing hearing. To give you an example, someone might plead guilty to arson, and the feds would move to dismiss the 924c (30 year incendiary device charge) and the conspiracy charge, at the time of sentencing. This would all occur pursuant to a formal written "plea petition" that is a public record and thus can be disclosed to the public (we will put them on our website asap). Sentencing, or the imposition of punishment (how much jail, fines, probation, etc.), would not happen at that point -- and might not happen until after the other (non-cooperating) defendants go to trial and may depend on how the cooperating defendant performs while testifying against his/her codefendants (convictions = less years in some instances).

Some defendants have been forced to make dire decisions facing multiple cooperating codefendants who are willing to say anything to get their own butts out of a life sentence. I believe it is hard for anyone that has not faced a life threatening situation like this to walk in their shoes at this point, but there is also no doubt that those actions are placing enormous pressures on codefendants who are still standing tall and demonstrating enormous principle in the face of extreme adversity.

The feds have also indicated that they are going to disclose a bunch of discovery regarding informant statements in the next few weeks that should be so illuminating it'll probably burn my retinas, but for now, that's all the information that's public on that front.

Jeff Hogg, the Eugene man who has been in jail for over a month for refusing to cooperate with a federal grand jury was in federal court today. Jeff was challenging a ruling made by Judge Michael Hogan that barred the public and his supporters from attending his contempt hearing. A contempt hearing is a public hearing where a person who has refused to testify to a grand jury goes before a judge to adjudicate his unwillingness to cooperate. In Jeff's case, the judge unlawfully prevented the public from attending this hearing. His attorney Paul Loney challenged the judge's ruling in a motion, and the judge basically conceded that he had not followed the law and basically ruled that he would re-do the contempt hearing right then. So guess what? Jeff was found in contempt of court again and continues to refuse to cooperate and continues to sit in the Lane County jail even though he has not, and is not, accused of committing any crime. The next step for Jeff and his attorneys will be to prepare to challenge Jeff's detention through motions that will hopefully regain his freedom once and for all. Jeff continues to stand by his strongly held principled beliefs of noncooperation with political grand juries. He will not allow the governments' scare tactics to coerce him into violating his own morals as well as weakening social change and resistance movements.

There has been a support email list set up at yahoo. To subscribe, send an email to FriendsofJeffHogg-subscribe@yahoogroups.com to receive updates about Jeff and calls to action for his support.