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       PEACE ACTIVIST DELIVERS A GENTLE SERMON ON HER WAY TO JAIL

       By Barton Gellman
       Washington Post Staff Writer
       Friday, December 30, 1988 ; Page C01

       Once, years ago, she had so lost patience with the arms race that she
       took a page from Isaiah and tried to hammer missiles into
       ploughshares. For destruction of property -- aboard a Trident nuclear
       submarine in Connecticut -- she served four months in jail.

       It was not Marcia Ann Timmel's first conviction, nor her last. In
       September she took her hammer to a six-foot-tall, $12,000 model of the
       MX missile at an arms show in the District, and in November she was
       found guilty of that crime.

       When Timmel stood up to be sentenced yesterday, she had herself and
       her morality for a client. In a firm, clear voice before a courtroom
       full of family and supporters, she delivered a gentle lecture to the
       judge.

       The funny thing was, the judge agreed with her -- to a point. Then he
       sentenced her to 90 days in jail, all but a week of it suspended.

       It was one of those awkward, illuminating encounters that appear from
       time to time in D.C. Superior Court: the defendant rejecting a legal
       norm in pursuit of a higher calling, and the judge, sympathizing,
       reasserting the primacy of law.

       "I would like you to to take into consideration," Timmel told Judge
       Eric H. Holder Jr., "whether what I did was right or wrong, good or
       bad, moral or immoral."

       "The reason you're a judge," she told Holder, who is black, "is that
       20 years ago your parents . . . were able to look at a law and say it
       was oppressive and they broke it, and because they broke it, it got
       fixed.

       "The laws that I was convicted under are there to protect nuclear
       weapons . . . . I think if you really pray and examine your conscience
       you can tell that preparing to slaughter innocent people is wrong."

       Assistant U.S. Attorney Mitchell Ballweg, replying, had no wish to
       argue about nuclear war.

       "No one," he said simply, "has the right to go around destroying the
       property of others."

       Holder, 37, the city's newest and youngest trial judge, decided to
       address Timmel's arguments more directly.

       "She is dedicated in a way that perhaps more of us need to be," he
       began, to a chorus of "Amen!" and "Hallelujah!" in the court.

       "You're right," he said, turning to Timmel. "I sit here today as a
       result of people like" the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who were
       "willing to go to jail" to protest unjust racial laws.

       "The essence of civil disobedience in its purest form," he said, "is a
       willingness to accept the consequences . . . . I feel that it is my
       obligation to impose a jail sentence here."

       "MX missiles are not dear to my heart," he said, but Timmel would
       spend seven days in jail beginning Jan. 9.

       After a brief outburst from a supporter, Timmel, 36, of Northwest
       Washington, stood again.

       "I would request," she said, "that during those seven days you
       seriously consider . . . the state of the world, and in order to help
       you do that I'm going to send you some books."

       Holder, showing no affront, asked Timmel to "understand, whether you
       agree with the sentence or not, this was a considered decision."

       Timmel had one last thing on her mind.

       "I'd like to have my hammer back," she said.

       Holder, taking that request under advisement, called the next case and
       returned to more conventional misdemeanors. Timmel and her supporters,
       embracing and singing, filed slowly out of the room.

       Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post
       and may not include subsequent corrections.

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