Former sheriff may face lawsuit

WASHINGTON -- A former California sheriff and his deputy can be sued for ordering the pepper-spraying of shackled anti-logging protesters, the Supreme Court said Monday in turning aside an appeal.\nThe court did not comment in refusing to hear the case, which involved the arrests of nine people who staged sit-ins at Pacific Lumber Co. headquarters and a congressman's office. They were protesting the cutting of ancient redwood trees.\nWhen the demonstrators, who had chained themselves with a 25-pound steel device, would not leave, law officers swabbed pepper spray near the demonstrators' eyes, sometimes repeatedly. Those who refused to surrender were sprayed in their face at close range.\nAttorneys for former Humboldt County Sheriff Dennis Lewis and Chief Deputy Gary Philp argued that the lawmen consulted with legal experts before using the pepper spray, and that protesters were not hurt.\nDeputies' videotapes of the sit-ins show demonstrators screaming after the spray was applied.\n"Our national tradition of nonviolent protests is alive and well and won't be extinguished by a police policy of torturing protesters just because that torture leaves no marks," said Mark Hughes, a professor at the University of Denver College of Law and the attorney for the protesters. "It's great when courts have a conscience."\nThe Supreme Court considered the case for the second time in a year. Last fall, the justices threw out a lower court ruling that ordered a trial for the protesters. The appeals court reconsidered and again said protesters were entitled to sue the sheriff and deputy.\nThe court could have clarified when officers have immunity for on-the-job actions, a subject of significant interest to justices in recent years.\nThe anti-logging protesters, part of the group EarthFirst!, demonstrated at the offices of Pacific Lumber and at the office of then-Rep. Frank Riggs, R-Calif., a logging supporter. Those were among multiple protests in the fall of 1997.\nHughes said no other American police force had a policy of using cotton swabs to apply pepper spray to the eyes of people who resisted arrest. In this case, he said the protesters were unarmed and unthreatening.\nNancy K. Delaney, an attorney for Humboldt County and the lawmen, said the force was reasonable.\n"To brush aside as harmless the well-planned criminal activities of plaintiffs is to compromise allegiance to principles which permit the very existence of a society which is both democratic and ordered," she said.\nHumboldt County is a coastal county in northern California known for giant redwood forests.\nThe case is Humboldt County v. Headwaters Forest Defense, 01-1744.