In the meantime, the judge in Hoye's criminal case is considering a request by the city that Hoye be ordered to stay 100 yards away from the clinic permanently.
Hoye, a slender marathoner who is also a chaplain for the Golden State Warriors, was recruited three years ago by white Roman Catholic antiabortion activists who felt an African American man would have an easier time approaching the clinic's many African American patients.
Executive elder of Progressive Missionary Baptist Church in Berkeley, he is usually accompanied by two black churchwomen, who are 83 and 90. "May I talk to you about alternatives?" he asks.
Hoye, a father of two who often says the birth of his first child -- tiny and premature -- gave him a visceral opposition to abortion, came to social activism late. In 2005, he said, he grew tired of his church "ignoring current, everyday issues," and with the permission of his church's elders and pastor, he put together a conference called "Issues that Matter," which launched him into activism.
"We can hear a preacher preach or a teacher teach, and we won't know how to vote, how to apply Scripture to our everyday life," Hoye said. "We will know that David slayed Goliath and God will give you a great victory in your life. Well, how do you apply this to abortion?"
At the clinic, patients mostly ignore him. "We've had days when we are cussed out, but there are times when they do stop," he said during an interview at a Berkeley cafe. His wife of 20 years, Lori Hoye, a statistician for the Golden State Warriors, sat beside him. She gets so angry about abortion, she said, that she can't trust herself to be calm on the sidewalk.
"We try to put ourselves in the position of the child," Lori Hoye said. "Would you want someone to try to save your life even at the very last moment? I would want someone to try to save me."
In January, Hoye, who had no criminal record, was found guilty of two counts of breaking the Oakland law. The victims, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Graff, were patients, although none complained to police and none testified against him. Police were called to the clinic by Barbic.
What Hoye did next made him an instant celebrity in the antiabortion movement. Instead of agreeing to community service and three years' probation, which would have required him to stay 100 yards away from the clinic, he chose jail.
