Biography
Andrew Lawrence was a 28-year-old former Peace Corps volunteer and peace activist living at Jonah House in Baltimore, also described as associated with the Community for Creative Non-Violence. On Easter Sunday, April 3, 1988, he joined Philip Berrigan, Sister Margaret McKenna and Gregory Boertje in boarding the USS Iowa with a public tour at Norfolk Naval Station. Calling themselves the Nuclear Navy Plowshares, the four separated from the tour, used hammers and bolt cutters against two armored Tomahawk cruise-missile launcher boxes, poured blood on the equipment and displayed banners reading “Seek the Disarmed Christ” and “Tomahawks Into Plowshares,” stopping when naval security ordered them to. Lawrence was arrested and charged with federal criminal trespass. Although offered release on personal recognizance, he refused and remained jailed in solidarity with Boertje, whose bond had been set at $25,000 over an earlier Plowshares prosecution. Tried without a jury before U.S. Magistrate Tommy Miller, Lawrence admitted the action but argued it was justified by international law and the threat posed by nuclear weapons; he was convicted on May 19, 1988 and sentenced on July 21, 1988 to four months in prison, having by then already spent 109 days in custody. He was then transferred to a Philadelphia jail to face a separate charge connected with hanging a banner from the federal courthouse roof during one of the Epiphany Plowshares trials; his final release date has not been recovered.
