I Was Jailed As An Ecoterrorist—But I Was Set Up By the FBI
After a decade in prison for an alleged bomb plot, Eric McDavid was released this month—ten years early—after documents proved that he was entrapped by the FBI. Here’s his story.
Eric McDavid says a lot with his eyes. He’s constantly using his hands, too, as if feeling for the temperature of a question before answering it, stroking the air to smooth out a kink or sometimes using all five fingers to pluck and draw down the threads of his own thoughts.
Fifteen days ago, at age 36, McDavid walked out of prison after serving nearly 10 years of a 20-year sentence for “conspiracy to use fire or explosives to damage corporate and government property.” A self-proclaimed Green Anarchist, McDavid was one of a handful of young environmentalists targeted by the FBI’s war against “Eco-Terrorism” in the early 2000s.
In a rare—if not unprecedented—judicial ruling earlier this month, McDavid’s sentence was overturned. The FBI was forced to concede that they knowingly withheld thousands of pages of evidence at his trial.