KNOXVILLE, Tenn., Feb. 18 (UPI) -- A federal judge sentenced Sister Megan Rice to 35 months in prison for the 84-year-old nun's 2012 break-in of a U.S. government nuclear weapons facility.
Rice, along with two other anti-nuclear activists, cut through multiple fences surrounding the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., then spray-painted and splashed blood on the walls of a uranium-processing building.
It was hours before security guards at the supposedly secure facility discovered them.
"Please have no leniency on me," Rice told U.S. District Judge Amul Thapar at her sentencing hearing on Tuesday. "To remain in prison for the rest of my life would be the greatest honor you could give me."
Rice was convicted of destroying U.S. government property and damaging more than $1,000 worth of federal property.
Thapar also sentenced Rice's accomplices, Michael Walli and Greg Boertje-Obed, to more than five years in prison because of their more extensive criminal histories.
But Rice also has a long record of civil disobedience -- she been arrested more than 40 times and served two six-month prison sentences.
[BBC News, CNN, Daily Beast]
