Jeff "Free" Luers

Jeffrey "Free" Luers is a political activist from Los Angeles, California, who served a ten-year prison sentence for arson in the US state of Oregon. On February 14, 2007, the Oregon Court of Appeals overturned Luers' sentence, instructing the Lane County circuit court to determine a new sentence. That court reduced the sentence from 22 years, 8 months to 10 years in February 2008, after what The Independent described as an "international campaign for a more appropriate sentence for a crime in which no one was hurt."

Luers is a former resident of Eugene, Oregon and helped establish Red Cloud Thunder, a group of activists who organized a tree sitting campaign to stop the clear-cutting of old growth forests outside of Fall Creek, Oregon.

In 2000 he set fire to three light trucks at Romania Chevrolet dealership in Eugene as a protest against excessive consumption and global warming, along with Craig "Critter" Marshall, who was sentenced to five and a half years in prison. Luers might have received a comparable sentence if he had not been convicted of an earlier attempted arson as well. Luers was initially sentenced to 22 years, 8 months in prison. Supporters argued that his sentence was excessive, because no one was injured and property damage was estimated at only $28,000.

The Oregon Court of Appeals overturned the sentence in 2007, remanding the case to the Lane County circuit court for resentencing. In February 2008, the circuit court approved a reduction in his term to 10 years, most of which had already been served.

Luers has at times been a cause célèbre among some radicals, anti-prison activists, and individuals associated with the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), although Luers has said that he does not consider himself to be an ELF member.

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Wikipedia