ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 13, 1997 TAG: 9702130065
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
NORFOLK
An anti-abortion activist sentenced Wednesday to 30 months in prison for conspiring to burn two women's clinics said she was trying to save unborn babies and never intended to hurt anyone.
``I didn't want any more children to die,'' Jennifer Patterson Sperle, 24, of Wichita, Kan., said after her sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court.
Sperle said she planned the attacks on the clinics in Newport News and Norfolk so that no employees would be around to get hurt.
``I would never hurt another person,'' said Sperle, whose forehead bore ashes she received at an Ash Wednesday Mass earlier in the day.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Burrows said it was sheer luck that the fires injured no one and caused little damage.
Sperle and co-defendant Clark Ryan Martin were indicted by a federal grand jury in Newport News as a result of a federal investigation into anti-abortion violence.
Sperle pleaded guilty Nov. 4 to a charge of conspiracy to commit arson. In exchange, two counts of arson and two counts of using fire to commit a felony were dropped.
Martin, an Old Dominion University student, pleaded guilty to the same charge and is awaiting sentencing.
Defense lawyer Blair Howard told Judge Raymond Jackson that Sperle was in a fragile emotional state at the time and that a government informant had planted the idea of violence in her head.
Defense psychiatrists concluded she had suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. The bad memories of an abortion she had in 1989 resurfaced in 1993 when her doctors suggested she terminate a pregnancy because the baby might be abnormal, Howard said. She refused, and the child was born healthy.
``We sincerely believe because that whole matter of abortion had been resurfaced in her life, she stepped up her actions in the (anti-abortion) movement,'' Howard said.
Howard also asked the judge to consider that Sperle came from a troubled home, and the impact the sentence would have on her husband and children ages 5, 3, 2 and 5 months. The youngest is still breast-feeding.
Burrows, however, asked Jackson to impose the maximum sentence of 33 months to deter further violence against abortion clinics.
``The impact [of the crimes] is the fear and apprehension that is suffered by the people who work at these clinics ... who go to work every day concerned that their building might be subject to attack,'' Burrows said.
Sperle told the judge that she had made a mistake and ``never should have been involved in what I was.''
Jackson told her that the traumas in her life did not justify the violence, and that her actions had been voluntary.
The judge declined to impose a possible fine of up to $60,000 on grounds that she could not afford to pay.
Prosecutors said Sperle placed a lighted flare through the mail slot at the Peninsula Medical Center for Women in Newport News on Dec. 13, 1994.
She also was accused of breaking a window at the Tidewater Women's Health Center in Norfolk, pouring two gallons of kerosene inside the clinic and setting it on fire on March 6, 1995. Jackson ordered her to pay $1,355 for damages.
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Anti-abortion activist Jennifer Patterson Sperleby CNBleaves the Federal Court Building in Norfolk with the Rev. Donald
Spitz on Wednesday.