Conspiracy's End

Last April a jury in Harrisburg, Pa., was unable to reach a verdict on whether the Rev. Philip Berrigan and Sister Elizabeth McAlister had been guilty of an elaborate conspiracy to kidnap Henry Kissinger, blow up heating tunnels in Washington's federal buildings and raid draft boards. The only offense the jury agreed upon was that Berrigan and Sister Elizabeth had smuggled letters in and out of the federal prison at Lewisburg, Pa., during the summer of 1970 when Berrigan was imprisoned there.

Smuggling letters in and out of prison is an offense that is most often winked at. In the past, the few defendants who have been convicted on the charge have usually been put on probation. But when Berrigan and Sister Elizabeth came up for sentencing last week, Federal Court Judge R. Dixon Herman gave the priest a Draconian two years in prison--to run concurrently with the six years he is serving for his role in draft-board raids in 1967 and 1968. Judge Herman sentenced Sister Elizabeth to a year and a day in jail.

If the sentencing raised questions about just punishment, the "conspiracy" theory at least seemed laid to rest. The Justice Department, evidently convinced that it cannot prove its case, announced that it has dropped all of the far more serious conspiracy charges against the Harrisburg 7.

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