NBC: Charges against Sheehan to be dropped
Antiwar mom removed from State of the Union address for protest shirt
BREAKING NEWS
NBC News and news services
Updated: 4:34 p.m. ET Feb. 1, 2006
WASHINGTON - Charges against antiwar protester Cindy Sheehan, who was arrested after a scuffle over a T-shirt she wore to the State of the Union address, will be dropped, officials told NBC News Wednesday.
U.S. Capitol Police took Sheehan away in handcuffs and charged her with unlawful conduct, a misdemeanor, when she showed up to President Bush’s address Tuesday night wearing a shirt that read, “2245 Dead. How many more?” — a reference to the number of soldiers killed in Iraq.
But Capitol Police will ask the U.S. attorney's office to drop the charges, NBC News’ Mike Viqueira reported Wednesday.
“We screwed up,” a top Capitol Police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
He said Sheehan didn't violate any rules or laws.
Sheehan, whose son Casey died in Iraq, was not the only one ejected from the House gallery. The wife of a powerful Republican congressman was also asked to leave, but she was not arrested.
Beverly Young, wife of Rep. C.W. Bill Young of Florida — chairman of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee — was removed from the gallery because she was wearing a T-shirt that read, “Support the Troops — Defending Our Freedom.”
The Capitol Police official said officers never should have approached Young.
Criticism from Rep. Young
Holding up the shirt his wife wore, Rep. Young said on the House floor Wednesday morning: “Because she had on a shirt that someone didn’t like that said support our troops, she was kicked out of this gallery.”
“Shame, shame,” he scolded.
Beverly Young was sitting about six rows from first lady Laura Bush and asked to leave. She argued with police in the hallway outside the House chamber.
“They said I was protesting,” she told the St. Petersburg Times. “I said, ‘Read my shirt, it is not a protest.’ They said, ‘We consider that a protest.’ I said, ‘Then you are an idiot.”’
They told her she was being treated the same as Sheehan, who was ejected before the speech. Sheehan had wrote in her blog Wednesday that she intended to file a First Amendment lawsuit.
She did not issue an immediate response to the charges being dropped.
“I don’t want to live in a country that prohibits any person, whether he/she has paid the ultimate price for that country, from wearing, saying, writing, or telephoning any negative statements about the government,” Sheehan wrote in her blog.
Sheehan was invited as a guest of Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif. She later was released on her own recognizance.
Capitol Police Sgt. Kimberly Schneider said police warned Sheehan that such displays were not allowed in the House chamber, but Sheehan did not respond.
Sheehan uncomfortable going to speech
She said she felt uncomfortable about attending the speech.
“I knew George Bush would say things that would hurt me and anger me and I knew that I couldn’t disrupt the address because Lynn had given me the ticket,” Sheehan wrote. “I didn’t want to be disruptive out of respect for her.”
She said she had one arm out of her coat when an officer yelled, “Protester.”
“He then ran over to me, hauled me out of my seat and roughly (with my hands behind my back) shoved me up the stairs,” she wrote in her blog. She was then cuffed and driven to police headquarters a few blocks away.
“I was never told that I couldn’t wear that shirt into the Congress,” Sheehan wrote. “I was never asked to take it off or zip my jacket back up. If I had been asked to do any of those things. ... I would have, and written about the suppression of my freedom of speech later.”
Sheehan was arrested in September with about 300 other anti-war activists in front of the White House after a weekend of protests against the war in Iraq. In August, she spent 26 days camped near Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he was spending a working vacation.
The Associated Press and NBC News contributed to this report.
© 2006 MSNBC.com
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