A Soldotna man who dumped buckets of cold water on war protesters and produced a video of it set to patriotic music pleaded not guilty to criminal harassment Thursday in Kenai.
Jeff Webster said he changed his mind about pleading guilty after friends and strangers applauded his actions and urged him to fight the charge. He was represented in court Thursday by Wayne Anthony Ross, the Anchorage lawyer and gun-rights champion who ran unsuccessfully for governor as a conservative Republican in 1998 and 2002.
Webster, who has a son serving in the Marines in Iraq, admitted he poured buckets of water from the back of a passing pickup on women holding peace signs at Soldotna's busiest intersection. He received a warning from Soldotna police the first time, then returned a week later with two buckets, video cameras rolling.
Ross said Thursday that Webster was harmlessly expressing his free speech out of concern for a son in the war zone.
"The more people who protest the war like that, the more dangerous it is for the kids," said Ross, who also has a son in the Marines in Iraq. "What does the state see in prosecuting someone whose son is fighting for the country?"
But the demonstrators doused by Webster said Thursday that they are appalled by the suggestion that it's all right to physically attack people for their beliefs.
"That whole scene left a bad taste in my mouth," said Karli Kay, who attended Thursday's arraignment and was struck by all the hugs Webster got from supporters. "I don't mind at all when they show up with their own signs. It's a completely different thing when it's an attack."
Every evening for an hour, a handful of demonstrators had stood at the Soldotna Y intersection with peace signs since the buildup to war began in March. Temperatures were near freezing in March and early April when Webster dumped water on them, they said.
The group included several pacifist Quakers and Billie Dailey, 82, who some days waved an American flag.
"It's our flag too," she said.
The case is the only one in Alaska in which protests around the Iraq war resulted in a criminal charge. Harassment, a misdemeanor, is less serious than an assault charge.
The first time Webster dumped water on them, the protesters declined to press charges, saying they knew he felt stress because of his son. Police tracked Webster down and told him to quit.
He was cited after his second foray and said then he would plead guilty.
Webster said this week he changed his mind at the urging of supporters.
"People I respect tell me that there is a bigger message in this," he wrote in an e-mail. He referred other questions about his case to Ross.
His video, widely distributed via e-mail, shows several people holding signs on a curbside getting doused from a passing white pickup to the tune of Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA." As the water showers them, Greenwood sings, "I'm proud to be an American."
Ross, who attended the brief Kenai court hearing in a flag-print tie, later said the state should drop the charges.
"If nobody gets hurt, it's basically a water balloon fight that somebody's getting charged for," he said. "If in fact he threw water on these people, well, there's a saying about throwing cold water on somebody's ideas."
It would be a different matter if someone beat up protesters with a stick, Ross said.
Assistant district attorney June Stein in Kenai declined to discuss the case, which she said was set for jury trial July 8 in front of Magistrate David Landry.
Earl Miller, 72, who went on local radio to call for supporters to attend Thursday's hearing, said he was one of those who urged Webster to change his plea.
"If there's any criminal charges, they should get them people standing on the corner for treason," Miller said.
But other people in the community have condemned Webster's actions.
"It is just such tyranny that our troops are fighting against," Julie Ball wrote in a letter to the Peninsula Clarion on Thursday. "What will they say when they get home and find out that this kind of oppression was practiced right here at home and in their names?"
With the war over, the group has stopped showing up for nightly demonstrations but plans to continue to work for peace in other ways, Kay said.
Reporter Tom Kizzia can be reached at tkizzia@adn.com or in Homer at 1-907-235-4244.
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