Environ-mental

Is a former Caltech graduate student’s developmental disorder to blame for his involvement in a radical environmentalist plot to strike back against American wastefulness by firebombing gas-guzzling Hummers across the San Gabriel Valley?

Attorneys representing William Jensen Cottrell will finally get to answer that question, after the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals last week overturned the 29-year-old ex-physics student’s 2004 conviction on arson charges.

A three-judge appeals panel last Thursday ruled Cottrell’s attorneys should have been allowed to introduce evidence of how Asperger’s syndrome affected his judgment as a quirky scheme to make an environmental statement snowballed into a Molotov cocktail and vandalism spree that destroyed 133 Hummers and other SUVs at auto dealerships stretching from Arcadia to West Covina in August 2003.

Cottrell, 29, was the only person convicted after a months-long FBI probe linked him to the attacks, allegedly plotted and carried out by Cottrell and two others under the banner of the Earth Liberation Front, a guerilla environmental network the FBI considers a domestic terrorist organization.

Asperger’s syndrome affects a person’s ability to socialize and communicate effectively with others, and a medical expert could have helped the defense elucidate how a graduate student regarded as brilliant could end up on a fiery rampage in the name of environmentalism, according to Marvin Rudnick, Cottrell’s Pasadena attorney.

“He’s a string theory physicist who, because of his Asperger’s, got sucked into an escapade by others,” Rudnick said.
Testimony on Asperger’s also could have had a profound impact on the jury’s understanding of Cottrell’s responses and reactions on the witness stand, his attorney said.

“I think the fact that he even had Asperger’s made it difficult for him to communicate with the jury in a way that would have given him a fair trial,” Rudnick said.

Cottrell has now served about two-thirds of the 100-month prison sentence a federal judge gave him, and it is unclear if he will be released. While the court tossed out his sentence and conviction on arson charges, it left untouched his conspiracy conviction for planning the attacks. Federal prosecutors are still reviewing the court’s decision to determine how to proceed.

The Hummer incident
Had it not been for a spelling error, Cottrell might not find himself today in Safford Federal Corrections Institution under the sweltering sun of the southeastern Arizona desert.

While studying at Caltech in 2003 as protest over war for oil raged coast to coast, the aspiring physicist allegedly hatched a plan to make a political statement out of gas-guzzling SUVs. So, according to investigators, Cottrell solicited help and funding from fellow students to print bumper stickers reading “My SUV supports terrorism,” which students posing as joggers were to affix to bumpers. Cottrell testified that two students, later identified in court as Tyler Johnson and Michie Oe, Johnson’s girlfriend, lent him money to print the stickers. But the stickers contained a misspelling — they read “terriorism.” Cottrell scrapped his plan, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the case. But he testified that Johnson said he would forgive the loan for the stickers if Cottrell went spray-painting with them the night of Aug. 22, 2003.

The next morning, plumes of smoke rose from firebombed vehicles and a building at a West Covina Hummer dealership, and graffiti marred SUVs at dealerships in Arcadia, Monrovia and Duarte, amounting to million of dollars in damages. E-mails boasting about the crimes then arrived at the Los Angeles Times.

But the court’s overturning of Cottrell’s sentence is not the first time the ELF bombing case has been turned on its ear.
A team of FBI agents, geared up for a domestic terrorism probe, first arrested Josh Connole, an environmental activist living in a eco-friendly commune in Pomona, in September 2003. However, a staggering lack of evidence led not only to Connole being dropped as a suspect, but also to a $100,000 settlement and an apology to Connole from the FBI, won by his attorney, former Pasadena Mayor Bill Paparian.

Agents soon after latched onto Cottrell as a suspect after learning the e-mails sent to the Times had originated from a Caltech computer that Cottrell was using at the same time they were sent. The phrase “SUV=terrorism” was spray-painted on the vandalized vehicles, and “American wastefulness” was a term that appeared in both Cottrell’s call to action for his fellow students and the e-mails to the Times.

Next steps
Federal prosecutors are reviewing the appeals court’s decision to determine their next course of action, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office for the Central District. Appealing the decision to the US Supreme Court or retrying the case in district court are among the options the government now has. If the case returns to the district court, a judge there could decide whether to resentence Cottrell or to release him based on the time he has already served in prison.

“We’re at a guessing game at this point in time,” Mrozek said.
Cottrell is reportedly having a difficult time in prison — one of the 9th Circuit judges even asked how he was faring — and Rudnick said he will attempt to have him released in the interim.

“I think everyone who knows he has this disability has to wonder how it plays out in a prison setting. It can’t be easy for a Caltech genius to be exposed to lots of prison violence,” Rudnick said.

‘The only way’
Since his arrest, Cottrell has gained an unsavory reputation as a snitch among the loose-knit network of radical environmentalists working under the banner of the ELF. They accuse Cottrell of turning on fellow activists Johnson and Oe, who vanished and were never charged with a crime.

“If this is the case, then Mr. Cottrell must live with a bad conscience and look at himself with shame every time he looks in a mirror,” wrote John Hanna, the reputed founder of the ELF movement, in an e-mail.

Johnson, a fellow Caltech student, and Oe, his girlfriend, mysteriously disappeared after Cottrell’s arrest. They are not considered fugitives since they did not face charges, said Mrozek of the US Attorney’s Office.

Rudnick said Cottrell’s label as a turncoat is unwarranted; he did not identify Johnson or Oe.
The “original” ELF, as Hanna terms it, first sprang up after a round of firebombings targeting crop dusters in Watsonville, Calif., in 1977. But that cadre disbanded in 1979 after Hanna’s arrest and conviction in connection with the bombings. Hanna said he recognized then that such “terror” tactics were counterproductive to the green movement.

But in the 1990s, a new generation of radical environmentalists, with which Cottrell was allegedly associated, assumed the name and often violent tactics of the ELF.

Hanna, who now runs a Web site devoted to the history of the “original” ELF, said he founded the group on the principles of civil disobedience so members would expect to suffer the consequences of any illegal actions. But, he said, “Everyone deserves a second chance.

“I hope Mr. Cottrell will go forward with his life as a productive member of society. He should continue his formal studies and effect positive environmental change within the system. It is the only way to do it,” Hanna wrote.