Editorials

OAKLAND – U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken is scheduled today to hear challenges to a court decision that awarded two Earth First! activists $4.4 million for First and Fourth Amendment violations by the FBI and Oakland Police Department. 

In August, Wilken upheld a jury decision finding that members of the Oakland PD and the FBI wrongly treated Darryn Cherney and Judi Bari as suspects when a bomb went off in their car in 1990, injuring the pair. 

The Oakland PD and the FBI seek to overturn guilty verdicts against them and to reduce the payments ordered. Lawyers for Cherney and the estate of the late Bari are requesting another trial that would include charges against six additional FBI agents who were dismissed from the case before the initial trial began. 

Bari died of cancer in 1997. 

The hearing is scheduled at 10 a.m. in the Federal Courthouse at 1301 Clay Street in Oakland.