SF writer, Peter Watts, who was beaten and jailed at the US border for asking a border guard why he was being stopped, and later convicted of obstructing a border officer, won’t be going to jail. Instead he was given a suspended sentence and fined. Unfortunately, because he’s now a convicted felon, he’s now barred from ever entering the U.S.
Tor.com has a good article by friend and fellow writing-group member, Madeline Ashby, about the sentencing hearing.
Judge James Adair, who presided over the case and who would be granting the sentence, is sort of like your favourite teacher. He hated school, fell in love with the girl across the street, tried to be a prosecutor but didn’t much care for it, and now drives a little red Corvette around his tiny town, dodging questions at lunch counters from the very people whose lives he holds in his hands. He told us these things before he pronounced sentence, claiming that he couldn’t do his job without looking Peter in the eye one more time. He spoke very frankly, saying that he found Peter “puzzling,” and that he constantly had to ask himself, “Who is Peter Watts?”
At this point, I had to stifle a very Hermione Granger-ish urge to raise my hand and say, “I know! I know! Pick me! I know who Peter Watts is!” As I wrote at my own blog, Peter is “the person who dropped everything when I fainted at a blood donation clinic. The person who rescues cats. The person who fixed the strap of my dress with a safety pin and his teeth. The person who stands up for me in critiques even when he thinks I’ve fucked up the ending (because I always do), who talked me through the ideas of my novel. The person who gives the best hugs.”
The article is titled “Sometimes, we win”. I guess you could look at it that way – at least Peter avoided a few months in a U.S. jail. But on the other hand, he’s now a convicted felon and will never be able to travel to the U.S. Based on what I’ve read about the case, it’s clear he was mistreated in the extreme and in any rational justice system, would never have been charged in the first place, much less convicted on what amounts to a technicality. I’d hardly call that a win – it’s a loss for all of us.