A Terrible Thing to Waste: Billy Cottrell, Part Deux

In ecoterrorism trial, court refuses leniency to brilliant physics student

Comments (0) By Paul Teetor Tuesday, Nov 24 2009

Billy Cottrell, the brilliant, award-winning former Cal Tech student who has served 67 months in California prisons for his supporting role in a 2003 ecoterrorism act that turned dozens of gas-guzzling cars into burned-out hulks at car dealerships in Arcadia, Monrovia and West Covina, will be required to serve between 18 and 33 more months in prison.

Boy genius Billy Cottrell in happier times

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In court several days ago, the tall, thin 29-year-old Cottrell was clad in white socks, brown sandals and an orange prison jumpsuit — and shackled with a brass chain slung around his waist. Upon hearing the sentence, he hung his head but otherwise showed little emotion. Family and friends in court at the Roybal Federal Building sobbed silently and hugged each other after hearing the news they had long dreaded.

“I’m devastated,” said Bruce Lloyd Kates, a close friend of the Cottrell family who has attended all of Cottrell’s court appearances during his five-and-a-half-year stint in the federal justice system. “We’re all devastated. ... Billy is a mathematical genius, possibly the next Einstein, but physics is a young man’s game and his best years are being wasted away in jail because he did a little spray-painting. He was duped into this because of his Asperger’s syndrome, but the jury never got to hear about that — and now a jury never will.”

Cottrell’s lawyers, Michael Mayock and Marvin Rudnick, had urged Judge Gary Klausner to commute his sentence to time already served — thus allowing Cottrell to resume his high-level work in theoretical physics. Klausner refused to let the 2004 jury hear testimony about Cottrell’s Asperger’s, which is sometimes associated with antisocial behavior.

Defense testimony at his criminal trial indicated that Cottrell’s physical acts were limited to spray-painting the burned-out cars with a series of slogans slamming gas-guzzling Hummers and SUVs, and attacking the materialistic, consumer-based American lifestyle. As L.A. Weekly reported in its cover story “A Terrible Thing to Waste” in March 2007, the two friends who invited Cottrell along during the attacks on the SUVs that night, and who, Cottrell later testified, stopped at gas stations to fill gas containers but never told him their plans, are on the lam and have never been brought to trial.

Because Cottrell was present when the fires were set, allegedly by his friends, only Cottrell — who was quickly caught by police — was left to stand trial. A highlight of the trial came when the owner of one of the damaged car lots testified: “He may be the next Einstein like they say, but to me he’s a Frankenstein.”

Although no one was hurt or killed in the late-night attacks on the car lots, Judge Klausner has treated the case as a serious example of domestic ecoterrorism. On November 16, he stuck with his original 100-month sentence, which will keep Cottrell behind bars, possibly for almost three more years. Klausner told the spectators in the courtroom that he had little sympathy for the arguments for compassion advanced by Cottrell’s lawyers.

Imprisoned with hard-core felons, including members of the Mexican Mafia, Cottrell has found new areas of interest, like teaching math to other inmates. His supporters argue that if allowed out early, he could accomplish far more good through his work in theoretical physics.

But the biggest reason for compassion cited by his lawyers is the evidence never revealed to the jury: Cottrell’s diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism that allows for high-functioning abilities. His disease was diagnosed after the ecoterror attack but before his trial. Cottrell’s attorneys cite the syndrome as the reason he got suckered into the conspiracy by the two men, who are presumed to have fled the country.

They say that the men, one of whom Cottrell owed $500, woke him up at night and told him they were going to spray-paint some environmental messages and he could work off his debt by helping them. His friends and family say Cottrell went along, not understanding what was about to unfold.

Even though a U.S. government psychiatrist agreed with the diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome before the original trial, the government prosecution team adamantly opposed the admission of any Asperger’s testimony in front of the jury.

Last week’s resentencing hearing was the result of a series of recent legal decisions that left Cottrell’s family, friends, and attorneys Mayock and Rudnick optimistic of a long-awaited break in the controversial case, which they say never should have been prosecuted.

“Billy was a witness to this crime,” Rudnick, a former federal prosecutor himself, tells the Weekly. “He shouldn’t have been there, but still this was prosecution of a witness because they couldn’t catch the real ecoterrorists ... the government had to convict someone and Billy was left holding the bag when the real bad guys got away.”

They had hoped that Judge Klausner, who presided over the original trial, would look at the big picture and realize that whatever Cottrell’s true level of involvement in the fiery attacks, which damaged more than 125 vehicles, he had already paid his debt to society.