Federal prosecutors throughout the West have struggled recently to win conspiracy convictions against groups of loosely organized individual rights activists who identify with an anti-government movement that is best known for staging armed protests on federally managed land.
A federal judge declared a mistrial Monday in the first Bunkerville standoff case, which targeted six men accused of conspiring with rancher Cliven Bundy to derail a court-ordered cattle seizure in 2014.
Jurors in the first Bunkerville standoff trial still had not reached a verdict when they concluded their fifth day of deliberations Thursday afternoon.
Jurors in the first Bunkerville standoff trial finished their second day of deliberations Monday without reaching a verdict.
A federal jury started deliberating Thursday in the conspiracy trial of six people charged as “gunmen” in the armed standoff in Bunkerville.
A federal prosecutor on Wednesday characterized six Bunkerville protesters as militiamen who heeded rancher Cliven Bundy’s call to arms, while defense attorneys used closing arguments to portray the men as peaceful demonstrators asserting their constitutional rights.
Two months of testimony in the first Bunkerville standoff trial concluded Monday with a defendant’s dramatic assertion that authorities sat in foxholes waiting to shoot protesters who arrived at the site where federal agents for days had been rounding up Cliven Bundy’s cattle.
Idaho gun enthusiast Eric Parker banked on his commitment to self-defense Thursday when he stepped to the witness stand and tried to convince jurors he played no role in a conspiracy to bully federal agents into abandoning their roundup of hundreds of rancher Cliven Bundy’s cows.
