Biography
James Cunningham, 40 at the time of Trident Nein, was a former lawyer who had given up a high-living legal practice (and a house in Laguna Beach, California) to join the Jonah House resistance community in Baltimore founded by Phil Berrigan and Liz McAlister. He had previously served 60 days for trespassing at the Trident submarine plant in Bangor, Washington, before joining Jonah House through his friend Karl Smith.
Trident Nein dates and separate proceedings
Participant Art Laffin dates the action and arrests to July 5, 1982. The contemporary sentencing report dates the original disposition to November 9, 1982. A sentence is not treated as a verified prison-admission date.
The erroneous July 3 admission was removed. Actual initial custody endpoints remain unresolved.
The existing year-only 1983 release remains year precision; it does not establish a single uninterrupted stay or a January 1 release. The unsupported 182-day calculation was removed.
Sources: Art Laffin, July 2022 eyewitness retrospective; Revolutionary Worker, November 12, 1982, pages 1–2.
The March 10, 1983 six-month restitution sentence is recorded as a separate later proceeding, with admission and release unresolved. Source: UPI report in Manchester Herald, March 11, 1983, printed page 4. The report also describes a separate twenty-person vigil arrest; those unnamed custody details have not been assigned to this defendant.
Original archival custody and release evidence
The Nuclear Resister issue 12 names all nine participants and reports seven weeks in jail followed by August 26, 1982 recognizance release. Initial custody is July 5–August 26, not an uninterrupted stay through 1983.
A separate record preserves the November 9 disposition and actual release on 1982-12-09. Issue 13 confirms later confinement, but does not explicitly establish its admission day; sentence day has not been substituted for admission. This later duration remains unknown.
Issue 16 confirms April 4, 1983 release after the separate March 10 restitution sentence.
Sources: issue 12, October 18, 1982, printed page 4 (PDF page 6); issue 13, November 30, 1982, page 4; issue 14, January 14, 1983, page 3; issue 15, March 9, 1983, printed page 6 (PDF page 8); issue 16, April 17, 1983, printed page 10 (PDF page 11); issue 17, June 6, 1983, page 5.
