(Radio Iowa) – A Des Moines woman who was convicted of vandalizing the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 and 2017 is now out of federal prison. Jessica Reznicek was sentenced to eight years in federal prison for conspiracy to damage an energy facility with a terrorism enhancement. Frank Cordaro of the Catholic Worker House in Des Moines picked up Reznicek at the federal prison in Minnesota October 1st, and she is now serving time at a halfway house. “She has two more years to do, they’re cutting off two full years of the eight years, so she’ll end up doing six years,” he says. “And the halfway house will keep her until she’s ready to transition to home arrest with an ankle bracelet.”

Reznicek and Ruby Montoya vandalized a sign outside the Iowa Utilities Commission office in 2017 and then admitted to damaging the pipeline using an oxy-acetylene cutting torch and setting fires near pipeline instruments and equipment in Mahaska, Boone, and Wapello Counties. Reznicek was also ordered to pay more than three million dollars in restitution. “That’s just not going to get paid, not through the halfway house employment or through the rest of her life. But what she deals with now is paying what they take from her, whatever paycheck she gets at a minimum wage job,” Cordaro says. Cordaro says Reznicek glad to be back in Iowa.

Jessicca Reznicek (Photo from Frank Cordaro)

“She’s very happy. She’s looking forward to dealing with the yet another crazy system and being close to home,” he says. It just makes it all that much closer, gets it that much closer to her freedom. She’s she’s done some hard time, and it’s time to get free. And she’s at a literally halfway house, it’s halfway out half way in.” Cordaro says The Catholic Work House has supported Reznicek, and he says she wants to come back there when she ends her time in the halfway house. “When she gets to be at home arrest, she can probably hang out with the workers, help us do the soup kitchen work and be part of the community. So, that’s all real good news for us. That’s better than having her in Minnesota in a federal penitentiary,” Cordaro says.

Reznicek and Montoya defended their actions saying they were climate activists. Cordaro says he believes they are heroes. “I think these young women took risks to stop the great sin of our times, the way in which we use oil to destroy the planet,” Cordaro says.

Montoya was sentenced to six years in prison. Cordaro says he does not know where Monotya is now.