Guilty Verdicts for 4 Men in Takeover of Oregon Wildlife Refuge

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/us/wildlife-refuge-guilty-verdicts-takeover-oregon.html

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PORTLAND, Ore. — Guilty verdicts at a trial here on Friday offered prosecutors some measure of redemption after they failed last fall to convict the leaders of a group that had taken over a federal bird sanctuary.

On Friday, a jury convicted two men of conspiracy to impede federal officers during last year’s armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, about 290 miles southeast of Portland. Two other men were convicted of a lesser charge.

The outcome differed sharply from that in October, when the leaders of the armed antigovernment protesters, Ammon and Ryan Bundy, and five other occupiers were found not guilty of conspiracy in a trial that drew national attention.

Dozens of people, including some government informants, occupied the refuge from Jan. 2 to Feb. 11, 2016. They were allowed to come and go for several weeks as the authorities tried to avoid the bloodshed seen in past standoffs in Waco, Tex., and Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

The Bundys and other prominent figures were arrested during a traffic stop on Jan. 26, 2016, that ended with the fatal shooting of the occupation’s spokesman, LaVoy Finicum.

In the current trial, two defendants, Jason Patrick and Darryl Thorn, were found guilty of conspiracy and face up to six years in prison. Two others, Duane Ehmer and Jake Ryan, were found guilty of deprivation of government property but acquitted of conspiracy.

“Life goes on. I was there at the refuge, and I rode my horse on the game refuge,” Mr. Ehmer said after the trial ended. “I’m heading home to go ride my ponies for a couple months, and then I’m going to take my mom fishing.”

The men will be sentenced at a later date.

They faced the same primary charge as the Bundys: conspiring to impede Interior Department employees from doing their jobs at the refuge.

Prosecutors argued that any rational person would be impeded from work when someone with a gun was sitting at their desk, as images of the occupiers showed they did.

Defense lawyers countered that the occupation was a political protest against federal land policy and the imprisonment of two ranchers. They said there had been no talk of disrupting anyone’s ability to work.

Testimony began Feb. 21, but no defendants took the stand. Ammon Bundy did testify about the motive for the occupation, saying he had been “driven” to protest federal control of Western lands after learning that two ranchers had been imprisoned for setting fires on public rangeland.

There was no dispute that the group seized the refuge and established armed patrols.

Stung by their defeat in the Bundys’ trial in October, prosecutors hired a consultant to help with jury selection for the latest trial. During the proceedings, the assistant United States attorneys Geoffrey Barrow and Ethan Knight emphasized to jurors that a conspiracy did not require a formal or written agreement hashed out in secrecy.

Most of the occupiers, including the four defendants in the latest trial, left the refuge shortly after Mr. Finicum’s death, but some holdouts remained a few more weeks before surrendering.