A jury Thursday delivered an across-the-board acquittal to the leaders and participants in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation in Oregon and a blow to the federal government as it tries to tamp down a national movement led by a Nevada family to open public lands to ranchers, miners, and loggers, reports the Oregonian.
The verdicts finding Ammon Bundy, older brother Ryan Bundy, and five others not guilty of a federal conspiracy drew elation from defense attorneys who spent five weeks arguing that the armed takeover amounted to a time-honored tradition of First Amendment protest and civil disobedience.
The high-profile case riveted the state and drew national and international attention to the isolated bird sanctuary in rural eastern Oregon. The jury's decision proved no less dramatic and sets up a showdown in the next stage of the land-rights movement.
The Bundy brothers still face prosecution in Nevada with their father, Cliven Bundy, all accused in the 2014 standoff at the patriarch's ranch over unpaid grazing fees that pitted the family and their supporters against federal Bureau of Land Management agents.
The Oregon prosecutors sat silently in front of their boss, U.S. Attorney Billy Williams, and the head of the FBI in Oregon, Greg Bretzing, as the judge announced the "not guilty'' pleas one by one.
Bretzing, whose agents led the response to the Jan. 2 refuge seizure, said, "We believe now -- as we did then – that protecting and defending this nation through rigorous obedience to the U.S. Constitution is our most important responsibility.''
A brawl broke out at the very end, when six to seven U.S. marshals surrounded Ammon Bundy's lawyer Marcus Mumford as he stood before the judge, arguing and shouting for his client to walk out the door a free man. They tackled him and stunned him with a TASER. As Mumford yelled, "What are you doing?'' U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown ordered, "Everybody out of the courtroom!''
