An equal rights activist is being held without bail in Virginia for baring her breast in a re-enactment of the Virginia state seal. Michelle Renay Sutherland is charged with indecent exposure, a non-violent misdemeanor, but Judge Lawrence B. Cann III, the chief judge of the Richmond General District Court, has ordered her to be imprisoned until a March 21 hearing.
As performance art advocating that Virginia ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, Sutherland exposed one breast to portray the Roman goddess Virtus, who is shown on Virginia’s seal with her foot on a figure representing Tyranny. A magistrate set a $700 bail, only to have Cann revoke that.
“What the woman did in re-enacting the flag/seal is classic political speech entitled to the highest free speech protection known to law,” a past president of the Virginia State Bar told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “She should win and the denial of bond seems to be totally inappropriate. I am very surprised to see that done in a case in which she’d be unlikely to get jail time even if convicted.”
Perhaps Cann knew that Sutherland was unlikely to be convicted or, if convicted, to be sentenced to jail, so he decided to impose a pre-trial sentence to both retaliate against Sutherland and intimidate other activists. It’s hard to think of other reasons for such an outrageous move—holding someone without bail is the sort of thing you usually hear about in major crimes, not PG-13 political activism. To go from a routine $700 bail to a month of imprisonment shows that something isn’t right here.