briana waters found guilty of 2 charges, jury hung on so far on the rest
from an unattributed news source:
A federal jury found that Briana Waters, a former Olympia resident, was among a group of ecosaboteurs who torched the center in the predawn hours of May 21, 2001, causing about $1.5 million in damage. The center was later rebuilt at a cost of about $7 million.
Waters faces up to five years in prison for each count of arson.
But the jury, which had been deliberating since Friday afternoon, couldn't reach a verdict on three other counts, including one that would have resulted in a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years in prison.
In all, Waters faced five counts: two counts of arson, one count of conspiracy and two charges stemming from the possession and use of a homemade time-delayed gasoline bomb used to start the fire. Use of the device in a crime of violence carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years in prison.
The Earth Liberation Front claimed responsibility for the fire because it believed, mistakenly, that a UW researcher was genetically engineering trees.
Late Wednesday, jurors sent a note to U.S. District Judge Franklin Burgess that indicated they were unable to reach a unanimous decision on all counts and asked how to proceed. The judge asked the jurors if they had reached unanimous verdicts on at least some of the charges, and the jurors responded "Yes."
Prosecutors urged the judge to accept whatever verdicts had been reached, but Burgess refused and sent the jury home Wednesday night. Burgess this morning agreed to accept the partial verdict.