Biography
Ira M. Wechsler was jailed for the March 1969 Stony Brook University library protest against university war research and recruitment. Wechsler was active in Students for a Democratic Society and the Progressive Labor Party.
Contemporary conviction and sentencing detail
The November 10, 1970 Statesman front-page report names Suffolk County District Court Judge Peter M. Nucci as the judge who sentenced Ira Wechsler on November 9 to fourteen months in jail and a $1,200 fine. It reports seven convictions among twenty-four charges: five convictions including riot on October 26, followed by jury convictions for criminal tampering and criminal mischief; two charges ended in acquittal and the remaining charges were dismissed. These proceedings arose from May 1969 campus disorders, distinct from his earlier March 1969 library-protest case. The report explicitly says he had remained jailed since the first conviction. The existing October 26 admission and November 9 sentence already record that chronology and remain unchanged. The nominal fourteen-month term does not establish actual time served or a release day.
Statesman, November 10, 1970, original page 1, Wechsler Given 14 Months.
Actual prison status in May 1971, not a new admission
The May 4, 1971 Statesman specifically names Ira Wechsler and Jerry Tung as then serving prison terms after convictions arising from the May 1969 campus disorders. The same article distinguishes Glenn Kissack’s still-future June 11 sentencing. For Wechsler this corroborates actual imprisonment during the already separately recorded later case with October 26, 1970 remand and November 9 sentencing. May 4 is a status observation, not a new intake, and the article supplies no actual release day. It does not make the separate March 1969 fifteen-day case continuous through 1971.
Statesman, Stony Brook, volume14 no.48, May4,1971, original page1.
The front-page roster individually names this student among the twenty-one defendants sentenced by Justice Edward U. Green Jr. following the library occupation against university war research and recruitment. It reports guilty pleas to reduced loitering violations and fifteen-day county-jail sentences. The prosecutor requested an additional $100 fine, but the article does not say the judge imposed it. The sentence was still being served as of this issue; it is not proof of a completed fifteen days or an exact release. Existing independently recorded service evidence is retained.
