Eric McDavid
American green anarchist
Eric McDavid is an American green anarchist who was convicted of conspiring to use fire or explosives to damage corporate and government property and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The trial revealed that McDavid's group had not decided whether or not to claim the planned actions in the name of the ELF. On January 8, 2015, after he spent eight years and 360 days in prison, McDavid's conviction was overturned after the prosecution conceded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had withheld thousands of pages of potentially exculpatory evidence.
Sabotage plans
Together with Zach Jenson, Lauren Weiner, and "Anna" (Zoe Elizabeth Voss, a paid FBI informant) McDavid planned acts of arson and sabotage to the Nimbus Dam, United States Forest Service, and nearby utilities.
"Anna" had been working with the FBI to infiltrate the group since 2004. She encouraged their activities and provided them with bomb-making information, money to buy the raw materials, transportation and a cabin to work in, and produced consensual audio and video recordings of their activities. "Anna" made use of McDavid's attraction to her: he described her as his "soul twin" and said he had changed his behavior in order to please her. According to "Anna", McDavid threatened to kill her if she turned out to be working with law enforcement.
Defense attorney Mark Reichel argued that "Anna" acted as an agent provocateur: encouraging the group to focus on a target, paying for meeting arrangements and supplies, and urging the group to act when they wavered. Reichel said "Anna" taught McDavid, Jenson and Weiner how to make bombs and supervised their activities. Reichel stated at the trial, "the crisp $100 bills and a Dutch Flat cabin where the group lived in the days leading up to the trio's arrest—all supplied by 'Anna' thanks to her FBI sponsors ...
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This entry incorporates text from “Eric McDavid” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.