The controversy over Ruby Ridge, located in a gorgeous,
heavily-wooded section of remote North Idaho, lives on.
Recently, murder charges against the prime shooter,
Lon Horiuchi, were
dropped by the new Boundary County Prosecuting Attorney (known as
the
District Attorney in many other places in America), Brett Benson.
The
charges had been pending for years, while the federal judicial system
ruminated over whether Horiuchi could be prosecuted by the State
of Idaho.
Finally, earlier this year, the green light was given by a federal
judge.
Horiuchi, the federal sniper who boasted of being able to hit a
dime at a
hundred yards, would stand trial for shooting Randy Weaver's wife,
Vicky,
in the head as she stood behind a door with her baby in her arms.
She
fell where she stood, shot by Horiuchi from much less than his claimed
"perfect accuracy" range.
More on the charges against Horiuchi, but first
some background is in
order.
Vicky Weaver is dead. So is her son. Both shot by
Federal agents,
embarked upon a fool's errand to arrest Randy Weaver for having
agreed to
sell a shotgun with a stock too short by a half inch to undercover
BATF
agents.
Weaver
was badly strapped for money and had made a few dollars buying and
selling weapons in the past. (North Idaho is prime hunting country,
drawing hunters of every stripe from throughout the world.) His
entrapment by the BATF was a part of their scheme to infiltrate
the Aryan Nations compound, located an hour down the road. Get him
up on charges, they figured, and he would be willing to be their
informant, since he occasionally visited the compound with his family
to attend church services.
This is the way the feds do it, you see. It's called
good, solid
investigatory police work. Never mind if a few innocents' lives
get
destroyed in the process.
Mind you, there was nothing illegal about the shotgun,
modified at the
demand of the undercover agents, just the fact that Weaver sold
it without
remitting a $200 tax to the BATF. You see, Idaho is one of the few
places
where one can still possess such things as machine guns, silencers
and
sawed-off shotguns, provided one pays the requisite $200 tax per
item to
the feds.
As a side note, the tax was imposed early during
the last century
primarily as a means of keeping really effective weapons out of
the hands
of blacks in America. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
(BATF)
was formulated during the days of Prohibition. The eventual legalization
of alcohol meant that the bureau had to look to other arenas to
exercise
its power and justify its size at the time. Firearms were the logical
choice. There has been an assault on the Second Amendment ever since.
They finally got Richard Butler and the Aryan Nations
church that he
founded many years ago, of course. They didn't even need Randy Weaver
for
that. Morris Dees accomplished that through his Southern Poverty
Law
Center's trumped-up civil lawsuit against Butler, filed in 1999.
The
resulting 6 million dollar verdict obtained from a runaway jury
could not
be appealed due to the bond requirement. (To appeal a civil judgment
in
Idaho, one must post 1.4 times the amount of the verdict, you see,
which
effectively denies access to appellate review when verdicts are
anything
more than merely nominal.)
Eventually, Randy Weaver and his children were to
recover millions from
the federal government in a civil lawsuit for its conduct.
Benson, the aforementioned Prosecuting Attorney
elected last year in
Boundary County, upon learning of the federal judge's decision that
Horiuchi could be tried in a criminal prosecution, almost immediately
dropped the charges. It was never adequately explained why he did
so.
Benson recently got in serious trouble in an unrelated
series of incidents
which involved his forging another's signature to court documents.
He
resigned and is now dealing with the criminal and professional charges
arising from that imbroglio.
Rather than hold a special election to fill the
vacancy, Idaho Code
mandates that Benson's replacement be appointed by the Boundary
County
Board of Commissioners. Furthermore, the local Republican Central
Committee must provide a list of three candidates to the Board (since
the
electorate chose a Republican, goes the legislative rationale, it
is only
fair that the same nominating committee as placed Benson's name
on the
ballot in the first place propose a slate from which his successor
be
chosen).
Over the past couple of weeks, I received a series
of telephone calls from
the chairman of the Boundary County Republican Central Committee,
Steve
Tanner, and several others, urging me to ask that my name be included
on
the list to be provided the county commissioners. My willingness
to stand
up to the establishment had become well known and my integrity unimpeached
despite herculean media efforts to do so, is why I was told they
sought me
out. I ignored many of them and said no to the others. Even so,
it stuck
in my craw that Horiuchi was getting off, scot free.
Though I am a Bonner County resident, if three qualified
lawyers who are
Boundary County residents cannot be found, it is permissible to
go outside
the county for candidates. The county line is just a few miles up
the
road, so the logistics are irrelevant. Indeed, the current interim
Boundary County Prosecuting Attorney is a lawyer from Sandpoint,
which is
where I maintain my office. Similarly, Boundary County retains yet
another Sandpoint lawyer to advise it on civil matters.
The deadline to submit names was 5 pm on November
15. Finally, at about 3
pm that day, I relented and called Tanner to advise that he could
add my
name to the list. I made it clear that I was relenting because I
felt so
strongly that Lon Horiuchi must be reindicted and brought to trial
for the
murder of Vicky Weaver, which is precisely what I would do if selected.
Furthermore, I made it clear that I would indict as high up the
line from
Horiuchi as I could possibly reach.
My name was immediately added to the short list
of nominees, thereby
displacing the interim replacement. That simple act has given rise
to a
furor and headline treatment that was never accorded the disgraced
Brett
Benson, who resigned after admitting his forgeries. The outcry included
an "above-the-fold" headline story in the local "big-city"
newspaper,
replete with a rather bad picture of myself. The story prominently
linked
me to a politically-incorrect client from two years ago and attempted
to
paint Tanner as a right-wing kook embarked on a personal vendetta
against
the establishment.
The Spokane, Washington newspaper, The Spokesman
Review, neglected to
remind the public that I have a libel suit pending against it which
is now
being scheduled for hearing before the Idaho Supreme Court. That
suit was
filed after the Spokesman Review defamed me prior to the Aryan Nations
trial, at which I was the defense attorney, by making it seem that
I was
personally and professionally connected to both the Aryan Nations
and
another local anti-Semitic group, and financed by both. That libel
attached a taint to myself that has persisted to this day and which
at the
time resulted in members of my family receiving death threats.
This is just the start of a campaign to discredit
my inclusion on the list in a desperate attempt to ensure that I
will not be selected.
To ensure that Lon Horiuchi and his superiors will
never be held to
account for what they did to Randy Weaver's family.
This is how it is done.
Already, the word is out that the Boundary County
Board of Commissioners
is being relentlessly lobbied to ensure that I am not selected.
To ensure that Horiuchi and his superiors are never
again charged.
The Commissioners must make a choice by early next
week, else the
selection reverts to the Central Committee and we all know who they
might
select, now don't we?
Every now and again, the curtain slips a bit and
we catch a glimpse of the man in the booth, furiously clawing at
the levers. This is one of those times.
