1984]
POLITICAL ACTIVISTS AND THE GRAND JURY
1185
were jailed for civil contempt. 120 Thus, within a matter of months, nine Hispanic political activists had been jailed for refusing to collaborate with the government's grand jury investigation. Eleven months after the incarceration of Maria Cueto and Raisa Nemekin, before the life of the grand jury had ended, a United States district judge released the two women, determining that further incarceration would have no coercive effect because the women, although wrong, were sincerely committed to their principle of not testifying. 121 The court also found that despite several ex parte, in camera attempts, the government made no showing that the women had any current information relevant to any investigation concerning the FALN.122 The other eight imprisoned grand jury resisters were held in prison until the respective lives of the grand juries ended, nine months for the men in New York and five months for the men in Chicago. In November of 1981, the government again subpoenaed Maria Cueto, Ricardo Romero, Julio Rosado, Andre Rosado, and Steven Guerra, the chairperson of an organization initiated by the Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional ("MLN") 123_"the National Committee Against Grand Jury Repression." 124 The grand jury had moved across the bridge to Brooklyn in the Eastern District of New York, but still it was investigating the FALN. The government had no articulable basis to believe that the witnesses who had gone to jail for refusing to provide information to the grand jury in the past and who, since their release from prison had been politically outspoken against the grand jury, would now cooperate. In fact, the grand jury had no reasonable expectation of gathering any evidence by subpoenaing these political activists. Rather, the only effect of re120 In re Special February 1975 Grand Jury (Lopez, Caldero & Archuleta), 565 F.2d 407 (7th Cir. 1977). Two of those jailed, Ricardo Romero from Colorado and Pedro Archuleta from New Mexico, were political organizers and also former members of the Hispanic Affairs Commission. Archuleta, while confined for civil contempt in Chicago, was subpoenaed to the New York FALN grand jury investigation. See In re Archuleta, 432 F. Supp. 583 (S.D.N.Y. 1977),561 F.2d 1059 (2nd Cir. 1977). 121 In re Cueto, 443 F. Supp. 857, 860 (S.D.N.Y. 1978). 122 Id.
123
Following their release from prison in 1978, Maria Cueto, Ricardo Romero, Julio Rosado, Pedro Archuletta, and several others from Chicago who had been imprisoned, formed an organization to further their political and social goals, including independence for Puerto Rico, and to oppose use of the grand jury as a tool of repression-the Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional (MLN). Each returned to their respective communities, Maria Cueto relocating in Arizona, to rejoin their families and resume their lives. Conversation with Maria Cueto and other founders of the MLN, Chicago, IL (March I, 1979). 124 THE WITNESS, Publication of Episcopal Church, 10-11, Uanuary, 1982); Quash, Newsletter of the Grand Jury Project, Inc., Vol. 7 No. I, 5 Uan.-Feb. 1982).