Don’t compare Catonsville Nine to racists

I attended the dedication of the historical marker in Catonsville (“Once prosecuted, nowhonored, Catonsville Nine get a memorial marker,” May 5) and found it moving that Maryland dedicated a monument to a powerful antiwar event that sparked many others into resistance to the Vietnam War. The history of those times and the misguided war in Vietnam is worth remembering. I also read the objection to the veneration of the Catonsville Nine by Stephen H. Sachs (“Former U.S. attorney: conviction, courage and dishonor among ‘Catonsville Nine,’” May 5) whoarguesthat“the Nine” ignored the rule of law in a way analogous to murderous racists in the Jim Crow South who expected to have murder charges “nullified” by all-white juries of their peers. On that point, Mr. Sachs goes too far.

These were people prepared to face the consequences, who waited for the law to arrive, moved in part by respect for the law. Antiwar activists had gone to court to argue the illegality of the Vietnam War based on the U.S. Constitution Article 1, Section 8, but the judicial branch (Supreme Court) always punted the issue back to Congress and the executive. When law failed to stop an unconstitutional war, they acted to protect some young menfrombeing drafted into that. The question of “jury nullification” occurs when a jury believes that breaking the law is justified to prevent a greater harm. It is not a wacko concept. So, the historical marker is significant, if only to raise again these issues, in the current context, when our nation holds nuclear weapons at its disposal that are protected by “rule of law.”

Yes, they are, but some will test that rule when it comes to such weapons like Trident submarines at the Naval Submarine Base in Kings Bay, Ga., equipped with dozens of nuclear warheads. Seven activists, one of them from Baltimore, calling themselves the “Kings Bay Plowshares,” sit in a Georgia jail right now and will be appealing to jurors to acquit them for their deeds, which they see as necessary to prevent nuclear war. Such antiwar activists and the “Catonsville Nine” should in no way be equated with racists depending on all-white jurors to nullify their crimes of murder. Mr. Sachs owes them an apology for that.