Two emails re US evidence Cherney Bari bomb

Dar­ryl Cher­ney and Judi Bari were both mem­bers of the IWW at the time.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_16025546

SAN FRANCISCO — The sur­vivor of an Oak­land car bomb­ing reopened a 20-year-old case Wednes­day when he asked a fed­er­al judge to bar the FBI from destroy­ing bomb frag­ments he argued could con­tain evi­dence.

Author­i­ties this week said they exhaust­ed all leads and noti­fied the lawyers that evi­dence from the bomb­ing would be destroyed. Judge James Larsen ordered the FBI to pre­serve the evi­dence until the court decides how to resolve the issue.

The Earth First activist, Dar­ryl Cher­ney, claimed the FBI still has two sets of bomb rem­nants that could con­tain DNA evi­dence, as well as a hand-let­tered sign and duct tape. The evi­dence could lead author­i­ties to the iden­ti­ty of the per­son who plant­ed a bomb in Cher­ney’s car, which explod­ed in Oak­land two decades ago.

Lawyers for Cher­ney filed the motion Wednes­day before U.S. Dis­trict Judge James Larsen.

Cher­ney won a $4.4 mil­lion law­suit against the FBI and Oak­land police for civ­il rights vio­la­tions com­mit­ted against him and fel­low Earth First orga­niz­er Judi Bari relat­ed to the bomb­ing.

The two were on their way to a Save the Red­woods Fes­ti­val in San­ta Cruz when the bomb explod­ed May 24, 1990.

The blast ripped through the floor­board, seri­ous­ly injur­ing Bari. Cher­ney suf­fered minor injuries.

Oak­land police and the FBI claimed the cou­ple made the bomb. They said the bomb explod­ed acci­den­tal­ly and arrest­ed Cher­ney and Bari on felony explo­sive charges. The FBI lat­er admit­ted the bomb was not in the back seat as agents pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed but that it was placed under the dri­ver’s seat, accord­ing to a KGO Radio report.

Also, the nails in the bomb did not match oth­ers found in oth­er parts of the car.

The charges against Bari and Cher­ney were lat­er dropped by the Alame­da Coun­ty dis­trict attor­ney, who cit­ed insuf­fi­cient evi­dence to pro­ceed fur­ther. Bari died of can­cer in 1997.

Both charged that the FBI and Oak­land police nev­er con­duct­ed a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion, tar­get­ing only Bari and Cher­ney as sus­pects. A fed­er­al jury award­ed $4.4 mil­lion to Cher­ney and Bar­i’s estate in 2002. Jury mem­bers said their civ­il rights were vio­lat­ed when the FBI and Oak­land police arrest­ed them and ille­gal­ly searched their homes.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/08/BANR1FAM6L.DTL

(09–08) 16:54 PDT SAN FRANCISCO — It’s an infa­mous case that nev­er seems to go away, even after mil­lions of dol­lars have been paid out in civ­il set­tle­ments and police say the trail has gone cold.

The case is the 1990 bomb­ing in Oak­land of Earth First envi­ron­men­tal activists Judi Bari and Dar­ryl Cher­ney, who were near­ly killed when a nail-stud­ded explo­sive device blew up in their car.

Nobody was ever charged with the attack, and now, two decades lat­er, the FBI wants to destroy the last bits of evi­dence it has been stor­ing ever since the inves­ti­ga­tion drib­bled dry — rem­nants of the bomb and one like it that blew up in a North Bay town a few days ear­li­er.

Not so fast, says Cher­ney, 54, who has nev­er giv­en up try­ing to solve the case him­self.

Say­ing in court briefs that the evi­dence “pro­vides the last best hope for learn­ing who bombed Judi Bari,” Cher­ney and his lawyers were in fed­er­al court Wednes­day in San Fran­cis­co to try to force the FBI to turn the evi­dence over to them so they can run DNA and oth­er tests on it.

They man­aged to get U.S. Mag­is­trate Judge James Lar­son to order the evi­dence pre­served for 30 days while he decides its fate, but the judge indi­cat­ed the clock is tick­ing fast — and not in Cher­ney’s favor.
Main­tain­ing inter­est

“Frankly, I think it would behoove your side to talk to some­one in the attor­ney gen­er­al’s office to see if they can get inter­est­ed in this,” Lar­son told Cher­ney’s attor­ney, Den­nis Cun­ning­ham, refer­ring to the U.S. attor­ney gen­er­al’s office.

The idea would be for fed­er­al author­i­ties — or any­one involved in inves­ti­gat­ing the bomb­ing two decades ago — to reopen the case, or at least indi­cate enough inter­est to want to hang on to the FBI’s evi­dence.

Fail­ing that, the judge seemed inclined to let the agency go ahead and destroy the pieces of the explo­sives. He did say, how­ev­er, that he would do more research and con­sult with those who pre­vi­ous­ly dealt with the issue in court before he makes his deci­sion.
‘Hard to accept’

That gave Cher­ney’s back­ers hope, and they said Wednes­day they would be check­ing with inves­ti­ga­tors and pros­e­cu­tors to see if any­one wants to take pos­ses­sion of the bomb bits.

“There’s no rea­son they can’t keep these two box­es,” Cun­ning­ham said. “It’s hard to accept that these things have no more use when the bomber or bombers have nev­er been found.”

At issue are the rem­nants of the bomb that blew up in Bar­i’s car on May 24, 1990, on Park Boule­vard, and of a sim­i­lar device that par­tial­ly explod­ed in Cloverdale on May 9. The Cloverdale bomb explod­ed at the Louisiana-Pacif­ic Corp. mill, caus­ing min­i­mal dam­age, and was accom­pa­nied by a card­board sign read­ing, “LP screws mill work­ers.”

Both bombs are pre­sumed to have been made by the same per­son — some­one who sent a let­ter to the San­ta Rosa Press Demo­c­rat, sign­ing it as “the Lord’s Avenger” and giv­ing details that law enforce­ment said only the bomber would know. The evi­dence is being kept in two box­es in an FBI stor­age room in San Fran­cis­co.
Fin­ger­prints sought

“We need to be able to look at these bomb parts, do DNA test­ing on them, use them to try to find out who bombed us,” Cher­ney, who lives in Gar­berville (Hum­boldt Coun­ty), said after the hear­ing. By try­ing to destroy the parts, he said, “the FBI is run­ning cov­er for the bomber.”

He said he also wants copies of two fin­ger­prints lift­ed from evi­dence in the case that inves­ti­ga­tors said nev­er yield­ed a sol­id lead.

The like­li­hood that anoth­er agency will want to take over the evi­dence or reopen the case seems slim. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Oak­land Police Depart­ment and FBI said they con­sid­er the case closed, as did Assis­tant U.S. Attor­ney Joseph Sher when he argued on the FBI’s behalf Wednes­day in court.

“We see no rea­son for this evi­dence to be retained,” Sher said after the hear­ing. “The inves­ti­ga­tion is done.”

The FBI, he added, does­n’t rou­tine­ly hand over evi­dence to pri­vate cit­i­zens, espe­cial­ly not bombs.

Cher­ney and Bari were injured when the bomb, locat­ed on the floor behind the dri­ver’s seat of her Sub­aru sta­tion wag­on, explod­ed as the two were head­ed to a ral­ly to begin a cam­paign of protests to pro­tect old-growth forests, called Red­wood Sum­mer.

Inves­ti­ga­tors prompt­ly brand­ed the two as eco-ter­ror­ists, and Cher­ney and Bari were soon arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of hav­ing cob­bled up the bomb them­selves. But pros­e­cu­tors dropped the case weeks lat­er.
Suc­cess­ful civ­il law­suit

The pair filed a civ­il law­suit against the FBI and the Oak­land Police Depart­ment for false arrest and slan­der. Although Bari died of can­cer in 1997, Cher­ney pur­sued the case until he won a $4 mil­lion set­tle­ment in 2004 from the agen­cies. He split the mon­ey with Bar­i’s estate.

“I want to make it clear,” said Cher­ney, who is still with Earth First. “We are going to get those bomb com­po­nents. If they’re done, hand them over.”

E‑mail Kevin Fagan at kfagan@sfchronicle.com.

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