"I did not see how I could maintain my moral convictions, how I could give up my constitutionally guaranteed 1st Amendment rights," Hoye said. "The only option left to me was -- just go to jail."
Graff asked the judge to put him away for two years, but to Hoye's relief, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Stuart Hing sentenced him to 30 days. He ended up serving 18.
In jail, he received a visit from Salvatore Joseph Cordileone, the new Catholic bishop of Oakland.
In March, Hoye was a featured speaker at the California Students for Life conference at UC Berkeley. He was lauded by the Rev. Clenard Childress, a national figure who founded blackgenocide.org and coined the phrase "womb lynching" to describe the disproportionate number of abortions in the black community.
(At 12.4% of the U.S. female population, black women have 37% of the country's abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, whose statistics are widely cited by both sides of the abortion debate.)
On May 7, for the first time since his release April 7, Hoye was back on the sidewalk.
Since the law prohibits him from approaching patients, he decided to stand still and hold out a leaflet. He called this his "potted plant strategy." Would that break the law? He hoped not.
But Hoye's attorneys argued in federal court that the law discriminates against abortion foes in general, and against Hoye in particular.
"This is the 'all about Walter' ordinance," said one of Hoye's attorneys, Michael Millen. "You have police officers arresting people for no good reason on the sidewalk. The problem is, Walter is really effective. He is a really nice guy and that really bugs them because they want people to believe that pro-life people are thoughtless and boorish."
Not so, Barbic said. Barbic and three escorts testified that by approaching them, Hoye was "intimidating" and "aggressive," though he never said anything unkind.
Volunteer escort Sandra Coleman testified that when she would move alongside Hoye on the sidewalk to block him from patients' view, he would say "things like: 'And now I'm moving to the right a little bit, and now I'm moving to the left, watch your step, don't fall.' " She said his soft voice "implied intimacy" and was "inappropriate."
"And Mr. Hoye is always friendly to you?" asked another Hoye attorney, Allison Aranda. "He never says anything rude?"
"No, no," replied Coleman. "He does not."
