Letters Through the Prison Wall

An anti-war activist serving a sentence in a federal penitentiary exchanged letters with a nun on the outside. The letters were carried by another inmate who acted as a courier between them. Some of the letters discussed plans to "arrest" a senior presidential adviser, to disable underground utilities in Washington, and to raid draft boards. Prosecutors charged a conspiracy over those plans and, separately, charged the nun and the imprisoned activist with sending letters in and out of the prison without the warden's knowledge and consent, which a federal law forbade. The courier was in fact an informer, and prison officials had begun intercepting and reading the letters after the first one. The defence argued that no crime was possible once the warden already knew about the letters.