Wednesday, November 2, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
21
Juror: Acquittal was not endorsement of occupiers Sisters
salutes...
By Andrew Selsky
Associated Press
PORTLAND (AP) —
The stunning acquittal of
seven people who occupied
a federal wildlife sanctuary
in Oregon was a rejection of
the prosecution’s conspiracy
case, not an endorsement of
the defendants’ actions in the
armed protest, a juror said
Friday.
But sympathizers who
believe such resistance to the
government is justified could
feel emboldened by the ver-
dict, which might invite more
confrontations in a long-run-
ning dispute over Western
lands.
Worried that Thursday’s
verdict could lead to more
land takeovers, Interior
Secretary Sally Jewell on
Friday urged all government
employees to “remain vigi-
lant and report any suspicious
activity.” In a statement, she
said she was “profoundly
disappointed” in the jury’s
decision.
William C. Fisher, an
activist from Boise, Idaho,
who once camped by a
memorial to occupier LaVoy
Finicum at the site where he
was shot dead by police, pre-
dicted that the verdict would
encourage others to act.
“I think a lot more people
will be revolting, rebelling
and standing up against what
we see as a tyrannical govern-
ment,” Fisher said in a tele-
phone interview.
The 41-day takeover of the
Malheur National Wildlife
Refuge last January in remote
eastern Oregon was part of a
larger debate about the use
of federal lands in the West.
The militants led by Ammon
Bundy, a small business
owner from Arizona, wanted
to hand the refuge over to
local officials, saying the fed-
eral government should not
have dominion over it.
The U.S. government
owns nearly half of all land
in the West, compared with
only 4 percent in the other
states, according to the
Congressional Overview of
Federal Land Ownership.
One of the jurors in the
case asserted Friday that the
panel was not endorsing mili-
tancy to resolve those issues.
The juror, identified only
as Juror No. 4, wrote in an
email to The Oregonian/
OregonLive that the verdicts
were a “statement” about the
prosecution’s failure to prove
a conspiracy charge “and not
any form of affirmation of
the defense’s various beliefs,
actions or aspirations.”
Bundy, his brother Ryan
Bundy and five others were
charged with conspiring to
impede federal workers from
their jobs at the refuge.
One of the jurors ques-
tioned whether criminal
trespassing charges could
have been filed instead. But
Laurie Levenson, a professor
at Loyola Law School in Los
Angeles and a former federal
prosecutor, said trespassing
is only a misdemeanor and
prosecutors wanted felony
convictions.
They had few other
options to seek serious
charges because the defen-
dants never attacked anyone,
Levenson said.
Rather than attempting
to retake the land and risk-
ing a gunbattle, authorities
took a cautious approach.
They closed nearby roads and
stayed miles away while urg-
ing the occupiers to abandon
the land.
“This may be a case of no
good deed goes unpunished,”
Levenson said. “The upside
of not confronting them was it
was less likely there would be
violence. The downside was it
was less likely that they could
use the assault charge.”
The standoff finally ended
when the Bundys and other
key figures were arrested
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in a Jan. 26 traffic stop out-
side the refuge. That’s when
Finicum was killed. Most
occupiers left after his death,
but four holdouts remained
until Feb. 11, when they sur-
rendered following lengthy
negotiations.
Bundy remains in jail
because he still faces charges
in Nevada stemming from an
armed standoff at his father
Cliven Bundy’s ranch two
years ago.
Joel Hansen, Cliven
Bundy’s attorney, said Friday
that he thinks the jury in
Oregon “saw through the lies
of a government which is
trying to prove these Bundy
brothers and their compatriots
were some kind of terrorists.”
In Hansen’s view and
some others in the rural West,
ownership of public land is
a constitutional question that
has not been settled.
“There is a seething anger
among those who use the land
because of the oppressive
management of the land in
the West,” Hansen said. “It’s
the ranchers, the loggers, the
miners, the Indians. It’s all
part of tyrannical oppression.
Their goal is to manage them
out of business to get them off
the land.”
The jury’s decision came
on the same day that officers
in riot gear evicted protest-
ers from private land in the
path of the Dakota Access
oil pipeline in rural North
Dakota. Authorities fired
bean bags and pepper spray
as they surrounded the camp
of demonstrators, who have
spent months embroiled in a
dispute over Native American
rights and the environmental
effects of the project. At least
117 people were arrested.
The Oregon occupiers had
chosen, perhaps inadvertently,
a part of Oregon where locals
and the feds had a recent his-
tory of working together. Few
who live near the sanctu-
ary welcomed the occupiers,
most of whom were from out
of state.
I think a lot more
people will be revolting,
rebelling and standing tp
against what we see as a
tyrannical government.
— William C. Fisher
Not long before the take-
over began on Jan. 2, locals
and federal officials had deter-
mined the fate of large swaths
of land, Harney County Judge
Steve Grasty, the top local
administrative official, said
last summer in an interview.
The High Desert
Partnership in Harney County,
a group that includes the
Bureau of Land Management,
the Nature Conservancy and
timber business owners, had
been working quietly to deter-
mine land stewardship, which
Jewell credited in her state-
ment on Friday.
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