Defendant Shawna Cox speaks at left as supporters hug outside federal court in Portland, Oregon, on Thursday. (photo: Don Ryan/AP
How the Oregon Militia Acquittals Reflect the Influence of White
Nationalist Agitators
By Andrew Gumbel, Guardian
UK
29 October 16
The verdicts mark for the third time in 28 years that a
high-profile federal case begs the question – do far-right anti-government
radicals evoke sympathies among jurors that other defendants do not?
Conventional
wisdom has it that defendants never catch a break in US federal court: the
conviction rate last year was more than 95%. But it seems
those odds improve if, like the leaders of last winter’s armed standoff at the
Malheur national wildlife refuge in Oregon, you are part of the radical
anti-government right.
The clamorous decision by
a Portland jury to acquit the Bundy brothers, Ammon and Ryan, and five others
on conspiracy and firearms charges on Thursday night marks the third time in 28
years that a high-profile federal case involving armed anti-government
agitators has collapsed.
In
each case, questions have arisen whether white nationalist agitators evoked
sympathies among jurors that other defendants do not.
Four
years ago, an attempt to charge members of the Hutaree Christian militia in
Michigan with sedition ended in similar embarrassment for the government after
the judge said there was no evidence the five defendants intended to attack
anyone, much less murder a police officer and ambush his funeral as the
prosecution alleged.
In
1988, another sedition trial in Fort Smith, Arkansas – this one featuring a
rogue’s gallery of more than a dozen of America’s most visible far-right
anti-government luminaries, some of them already serving long sentences for
violent crimes – also led to acquittals all around, not to mention the marriage
of a juror to one of the defendants.
In the
wake of the Portland verdict, some civil rights advocates and anti-gun
activists were quick to suggest a double standard when it comes to civil
disobedience and attitudes to gun ownership.
“Apparently
it’s legal in America for heavily armed white terrorists to invade Oregon,” the
former TV talk show host Montel Williams wrote
on Twitter. “Imagine if some black folk did this.”
On the
other side of the political fence, others suggested the prosecutors may simply
have overreached. Sedition is notoriously hard to prove and the charge has been
leveled only a handful of times since the founding of the republic for that
reason. In the Oregon case, one juror said he would have had no problem
convicting the defendants of trespassing but the conspiracy charge, which
carries much stiffer penalties, was a stretch.
In an
age of anti-establishment anger, jurors also appear to have been swayed by the
sheer confidence of the prosecuting attorneys.
“The air of triumphalism that
the prosecution brought was not lost on any of us,” juror four wrote to the
Oregonian newspaper, “nor was it warranted given their burden of proof.”
Mark
Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League, one of America’s foremost authorities
on right-wing extremism, said he could only imagine that courtroom dynamics
along these lines had undone what had otherwise seemed like a very strong
government case.
“I was
hardly alone in thinking that,” he said. “The mere fact that many of the standoff
defendants entered into plea deals rather than go to trial suggests that they
and their attorneys also felt the government had a very strong case.”
There
was similar incredulity at the not guilty verdicts in Fort Smith in 1988, as
analysts pondered how the government could possibly lose a case against leaders
and foot soldiers of the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations, among other
organizations, some of whom had previously been proven to have robbed banks and
armored trucks, killed people, and openly called for the violent overthrow of
the government.
On
that occasion, the jury’s sympathy for the defendants was clear. One female
juror started up a romance with defendant David Lane, previously convicted of
murdering a talk-radio host in Denver. Another female juror ended up marrying
David McGuire, charged with plotting to kill an FBI agent and a federal judge.
It
didn’t help that the judge dispensed with standard jury selection and
hand-picked an all-white panel over the objections of the prosecution.
“If
we’d had good jury selection, I think we would have won the case,” the FBI
agent targeted for assassination, Jack Knox, said in an interview years later.
“The judge … was dredging right at the bottom of the barrel.”
Another
former FBI agent with extensive experience of the radical far right, Danny
Coulson, did not exclude the possibility of similar sympathies being at play in
the Oregon case – on the side of law enforcement as much as the jury. Portland
may be a liberal city, he said, but gun culture is deeply entrenched in Oregon
and many people may have had some bedrock sympathy for the protesters’
complaints.
“It’s
the tenor of the times,” Coulson said in an interview. “A lot of people in our
country are sick of government trying to control every aspect of human life.
“I’m
not saying I agree with that position, but there are a lot of people who make
that case… The bureau [FBI] is brought into this stuff all the time, and they
don’t want to do it. They don’t want to be brought into it, and they probably
have some sympathy for the cause.”
Pitcavage
did not agree that sympathy for far-right defendants was a given, in this or
any other case.
“Almost
every prosecution of right-wing extremism is successful,” he said. “Our prisons
are full of right-wing extremists. It’s no more difficult to prosecute
right-wing extremists than any other class of people. With any particular
trial, though, there can be things that affect it.”
C 2015 Reader Supported News
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