Biography
Donna Howard-Hastings took part with Tom Howard-Hastings in the 1996 Laurentian Shield pole-cutting action at the Navy’s Project ELF antenna system. Their own contemporary update describes a three-year intensive-sanctions term, including a one-year state-prison sentence followed by electronically monitored home confinement, not three years in federal prison. The Summer 1997 newsletter reports her prison-to-home-confinement transition as June 5, 1997; its opening anticipates release by the time readers receive the issue, while the later paragraph uses past tense. The precise transition therefore needs independent confirmation. Home confinement restricted work and travel and was not freedom from all custody.
The Winter 1996 Nukewatch Pathfinder reports a December 3 sentencing after the September Laurentian Shield trial: acquittal of sabotage but conviction of criminal damage to property. Donna initially received three years supervised probation, an order to stay away from Project ELF and actual release. She then returned, poured symbolic ashes across the entrance and was rearrested for trespassing; the newsletter reports her back in jail awaiting probation revocation. The photo caption dates that protest December 4, while the body says she immediately joined a caravan after the December 3 disposition, so no certain rearrest day is assigned. Both Donna and Tom received credit for 114 actual days already served following their April 22 disarmament action. That is a documented earlier jail component, not her complete prison-and-home-confinement total. The later intensive-sanctions sentence and June 1997 transition remain separately reported subsequent events. Source: https://www.laka.org/docu/magazines/nukewatch_pathfinder/1996-4-winter.pdf#page=2
Photograph source
State-prison and home-confinement phases distinguished
The Summer 1997 Laurentian Shield update, attributed to Donna and Tom Howard-Hastings, describes three years of intensive sanctions and a one-year prison sentence, with a mandatory minimum of three months in state prison before home confinement. This corrects the old biography’s statement of three years in federal prison. It does not establish their total actual jail time as exactly three months: earlier detention may be separate. The update gives Tom’s transition as March 6 and Donna’s as June 5, 1997, but opens “will have been released … by the time your Pathfinder arrives” before using past-tense language. Donna’s June 5 transition is therefore retained as the source’s reported date without treating this mixed-tense item as independent confirmation of completed discharge. The currently stored case date is not overwritten. Electronic monitoring, limited approved work/travel and escape exposure show that house arrest was continuing custody, not final release.
Nukewatch Pathfinder, Summer 1997, original PDF page 2, printed page 1. Original complete article and all five issue pages visually reviewed.
