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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: Ammon Bundy Case as Inkblot Test: What Will Jurors See in His Words? PORTLAND, Ore. — The beard and cowboy hat that defined Ammon Bundy’s image to Americans on those cold mornings in January are gone. He is cleanshaven now and dressed in ill-fitting jailhouse blue. The federal wildlife refuge that he and other armed militia members occupied for six weeks in Oregon’s high eastern desert has returned to normal. But he is still talking. And talking. Through three days of testimony this week here in Federal District Court, Mr. Bundy, 41, the owner of a truck maintenance company, defended the takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. “I still believe very strongly that what we did was the right thing, and that it was legal,” he told the court. A kind of inkblot study of Mr. Bundy in psychological profile has become a central thread of the criminal case against him, his brother Ryan and five of their followers on felony conspiracy charges in connection with the armed takeover of the refuge. For the 12-member jury, that river of words — in the testimony and in the videos and news interviews during and before the occupation — is the means through which it is coming to know him. Continue reading the main story RELATED COVERAGE Bundy Brothers, Who Sought to Rally a Nation, Draw Scant Support at Trial OCT. 2, 2016 Bundy Brothers Defend Armed Occupation of Oregon Refuge SEPT. 29, 2016 Oregon Refuge Occupiers Were Protesting, Lawyer Says SEPT. 13, 2016 Trial to Begin in Standoff at Oregon Wildlife Refuge SEPT. 12, 2016 Oregon Standoff Ends as Last Militant Surrenders FEB. 11, 2016 What the jurors make of him — and whether his steadfast beliefs come across as arrogance or sincerity — could decide his fate when they start deliberating this month. At one point during his testimony, Mr. Bundy compared himself to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who also had to take a “hard stand,” Mr. Bundy said, for what he believed. And he said his Mormon faith had informed and fueled his determination to defend “the people” against incursion and overreach by the federal government in Western land policies. Photo Ammon Bundy in January at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore. Credit Rick Bowmer/Associated Press He dismissed the idea — central to the main criminal charges against him — that the takeover had kept federal workers from doing their jobs. Being armed throughout the occupation of the refuge, he added, was a tool to get people’s attention and was never meant to harm anyone. “This has nothing to do with refuge employees or their duties,” he said under questioning by his lawyer, Marcus R. Mumford. The Constitution, Mr. Bundy said, at one point grabbing the copy that jutted prominently from his front shirt pocket, is the sole reason he acted. “This was bigger than any of us,” he said. In his brief cross-examination, Ethan D. Knight, an assistant United States attorney, suggested that Mr. Bundy had benefited from a federal program and might not be the philosophical purist of strictly limited government that he seemed. Was it not true, Mr. Knight asked, that Mr. Bundy’s business had been financed by a $530,000 loan from the Small Business Administration? Mr. Bundy said that he had sought no such loan and that the small bank he had gone to had arranged it. Was it not true, Mr. Knight said, that having people armed during the refuge takeover was all about keeping the government from trying to take it back? No, Mr. Bundy said, the armed people “protected us from being attacked,” though he conceded that without the weaponry, the occupation would have quickly ended. The basic facts of the case are not in dispute. On Jan. 2, a small number of militia group members using the name Citizens for Constitutional Freedom — the number grew as the occupation wore on — seized control of administration buildings at the Malheur refuge, about 30 miles southeast of Burns, in Harney County, a sparsely populated area about a five-hour drive from Portland. On Jan. 26, en route to a meeting off the refuge, where they hoped to persuade ranchers to join their cause, Mr. Bundy and seven others were arrested during a traffic stop. The arrests spiraled into bloodshed when a member of the group, LaVoy Finicum, 54, raced his truck toward a police roadblock. After his vehicle went off the road, Mr. Finicum got out and was shot and killed by Oregon State Police officers as he appeared to reach for a weapon. The last four holdouts at the refuge surrendered peacefully two weeks later. In all, 26 people have been indicted; a second trial is scheduled for early next year. In the current case, which began here in September, Judge Anna J. Brown, in her rulings and instructions to the jury, has further sharpened the trial’s focus on the interior lives of the defendants — their state of mind, as she has put it. The most serious count in the indictment — a conspiracy to impede federal employers from completing their duties, punishable by up to six years in prison — also centers on questions of planning and intent in the decisions to take over the refuge and then hold it. But the judge has also strictly told the defendants and their lawyers that they cannot assert those beliefs to the jurors as truth about federal government land policies, the Constitution or anything else. Out of the jury’s presence, she has flatly said that some of those beliefs are wrong — notably that two members of a ranching family who live near the refuge were charged as “terrorists” by the government in an arson case. The two ranchers, Dwight and Steven Hammond — a father and son — were convicted of arson and sentenced, Judge Brown said, under a statute that included an antiterrorism provision but was not aimed purely at prosecuting terrorists; she read a legal instruction to the jurors reflecting that distinction as the Hammond case came up in witness testimony. The terrorism claim about the Hammonds was a major rallying cry of the protesters at the Malheur refuge, underscoring, as many of them said at the time, the idea that federal authority was clamping down on dissent and that ranchers in particular were being targeted. In a comment in open court but out of the jury’s presence, Ryan Bundy, who is representing himself in the case, said he thought Judge Brown’s instruction on the terrorism language was “intended to make us look stupid.” “The truth will come out,” he added. Ammon Bundy, in his testimony, repeatedly talked about prayer and about how God had led him to take action in defense of liberty. “I asked the Lord if he would clear my mind,” he said at one point, describing a long night of study and contemplation before resolving to go to Oregon. And then it was all clear, he said. “I did exactly what the Lord asked me to do,” he said. Followers then had to ask themselves a related question, he said, not unlike the one faced by the jury. Everyone who heard a call to come to Oregon, he said, had to “make a decision right now whether this is a righteous cause or not, whether I am a crazy person.” Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Ada (#0)
These guys are nothing but thugs. They owed the feds $20,000,000 in back grazing fees, violated grazing laws. They went to OR, told not to come, took over a federal facility, armed and destroyed it and were asking for a fight. A man was killed, his blood is on their hands. Now they are crying babies
I disagree. The feds are attempting to claim land which does not under the Constitution belong to them and set an arbitrarily high grazing fee in order to get them off so that they could sell it to their friends. They attacked no one but were petitioning the government for redress of grievences. And you forgot to mention that the man was murdered by an Israeli-trained policeman who shot first without provocation.
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