Pro-life defendant Calvin Zastro slammed Judge Aleta Trauger’s refusal to admit media and the wider public into the courtroom as ‘unlawful’ in a statement to LifeSiteNews and urged pro-lifers to contact the court in response.
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (LifeSiteNews) — A federal judge is refusing to allow media and the public into the courtroom at the sentencing of Christian pro-life rescuers in the Nashville FACE Act trial. Sentences for four pro-lifers are being handed down July 2 and 3, with two more pro-lifers set to be sentenced in late September.
Today, July 2, Paul Vaughn of Centerville, Tennessee, the Christian husband and father of 11 who was arrested at gunpoint at his family home in 2022, received his sentence at 2 pm. Tomorrow, July 3, Calvin Zastrow will be sentenced at 1 pm, Coleman Boyd at 2 pm, and Dennis Green at 3 pm. Chester Gallagher and Heather Idoni will be sentenced in the same case in late September.
The six pro-life rescuers were convicted in January 2024 for participating in a March 2021 rescue at the Carafem Health Center Clinic in Mt. Joliet, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville. The guilty verdict came in spite of the fact that, just a year and a half later, the same facility was forced to stop committing abortions to comply with Tennessee’s pro-life legislation after the June 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade.
Defendant Calvin Zastro alerted LifeSiteNews to federal Judge Aleta Trauger’s refusal to admit media and the wider public into the courtroom this week for sentencing. Asked why he thought this was so, Zastro told LifeSiteNews, “Because they don’t want their evil deeds to be known.”
The pro-life advocate denounced the courtroom exclusion as “unlawful” and called on fellow pro-life Americans to contact the judge in complaint. “That would be a time for a rapid response, for 100 people to call the judge and say, that ain’t right,” he said. “They’re going to set up another courtroom where they’re going to allow people in to watch. We might have video, but we’ll have audio feed there. But still, that’s not a lawful court proceeding if they deny public people from being in there to watch at the sentencing.”
Denouncing the DOJ’s tactic of intimidation toward pro-life Christians, Zastro said, “They raid you and then they threaten you with 11 years in prison to try and make you afraid and get you to comply. And then they think they’re nice when they don’t give you the max. Well, that’s not what normal Americans think.”
The max sentence for each pro-lifer is 11 years and a $350,000 fine. The potential decade-long prison sentence comes from the combined charges of violating the infamous pro-abortion FACE Act and “conspiring against rights,” a tactic the DOJ used in the Washington, D.C., FACE Act trials, which just concluded in May with all defendants receiving a prison sentence, despite the urgent medical needs of several elderly Christian pro-life grandmothers and women, who have already suffered gross mistreatment and torture behind bars.
In the present Nashville FACE Act case, the DOJ recommended the minimum 15 months for most of the pro-lifers for their peaceful protection of the lives of the unborn.
When asked what he might say to the judge and the courtroom at tomorrow’s sentence, Zastro told LifeSiteNews he was going to “trust the Holy Spirit to give me the word at the moment.”
“But my heart is to declare the glories of Christ and the humanity of the preborn children,” he insisted. “I’m not going to ask for mercy for myself. I’m not going to whine and fuss and cry. That’s not me.”
Zastro said he had been pressured even by his lawyer, who is appointed by the court, to take a plea deal, which he adamantly refused as “unacceptable.”
“They offered us a plea bargain deal that was unacceptable to the rule of law or my conscience,” he said. “And so, nobody took the deal.”
READ: Pro-life leaders demand Congress repeal FACE Act after new convictions in Tennessee
Compliance with the present Biden abortion regime, Zastro said, would be giving in to the government’s tactic of “fear, and intimidation, and ‘we’re in control’, and ‘you bow to us’.” “To me that would be saying Caesar is Lord. That’s what they want,” he said.
He also confirmed that LifeSite’s coverage of the abuse suffered by Heather Idoni at the hands of the U.S. Marshalls and the Federal Bureau of Prisons – whom Congress called out for gross medical neglect – was effective in remedying her urgent situation, in which she was being denied needed diabetes medication and prescribed medication for her heart following a stroke in April. The stroke came after extended solitary confinement with the lights kept continually on several months prior.
“The awareness you brought to Heather’s case when she was in the D.C. jail has followed through. But it’s bittersweet because they’ve always taken care of her meds, but the gals she’s transported with, they don’t take care of their meds. So, they don’t want bad press from abusing Heather, but they’ll abuse the other people that don’t have connections, that don’t get in the media. They’ll abuse them.”
READ: LifeSite letter to Congress: DOJ is torturing pro-lifers jailed in DC FACE Act trials
Zastro also said he was confident that he would not immediately be thrown behind bars because the DOJ wants to prosecute him further in several other FACE Act trials for involvement in other pro-life rescues.
“They want to keep me out,” he said. “In fact, the prosecution recommended I not go straight to prison so they can get me in Detroit and in Little Rock. And then also I’m being sued under FACE for the Fort Myers rescue. So, they’re going to try and keep me busy for a while.”
The contact info for Judge Aleta Trauger, who is pronouncing sentence over the Nashville pro-life rescuers at the Federal District Courthouse for the Middle District of Tennessee is below:
District Judge Aleta A. Trauger
Courtroom 6C
Chambers, Suite 6325
Staff Information:
Courtroom Deputy (615) 736-7157
Court Reporter Roxann_Harkins@tnmd.uscourts.gov
Chambers (615) 736-7143 (voice)
Chambers (615) 736-7156 (fax)
