Biography
Paul Magno is a longtime Catholic Worker and Plowshares organizer in the Washington, D.C. area who has been arrested repeatedly at the Pentagon and at the White House for nonviolent anti-nuclear and anti-war civil disobedience.
Pershing Plowshares: custody episodes distinguished
The original May 1984 newsletter dates the action and initial detention to April 22, 1984 and reports continued detention while the eight refused bond. The August issue establishes sentencing on July 26, 1984. However, Jim Perkins subsequently described a period of freedom before the trial ended. The initial detention and later sentenced imprisonment are therefore recorded separately; the exact intervening release and later remand dates remain unresolved. The July 26 sentencing date is not silently treated as a new prison-admission date, and no arrest-to-final-release continuous total is inferred.
The sentence was three years for depredation and five years probation for conspiracy, with restitution. Christin Schmidt expressly corrected the earlier newsletter account of an extra suspended five-year term, and Perkins independently describes the same sentence.
Sources: Nuclear Resister 25, May 9, 1984, pages 1 and 3; issue 26, August 2, 1984, page 1; issue 27, December 3, 1984, page 10, Schmidt correction; Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Spring 1986, Perkins firsthand account pages 4-5.
The contemporary update says Magno was released from prison February 21, 1986 and had returned home to the Dorothy Day community. That explicit report supersedes the previously retained but unconfirmed February 20 date. Source: Nuclear Resister 38, March 10, 1986, page 6.
Separate November 1983 Salem Resistance imprisonment
The Salem Resistance update individually names Paul Magno among five people who actually served three days in Montgomery County Detention Center, Maryland, following November 28, 1983 sentencing for refusing fines from their spring Vitro Laboratories action. His sentencing statement says the group was being jailed that day. The exact release calendar day is not printed. This is distinct from the 1984 Pershing Plowshares initial detention and later sentenced custody already recorded.
The Nuclear Resister No22, December 16, 1983, original page 7.
