Oregon Standoff Continues…!

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Oregon Standoff Continues…!

January 5th, 2016

Awake Goy

On January 2, 2016, armed members of several rump militias occupied the headquarters building at the United States Fish and Wildlife Service’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in protest of the pending imprisonment of Harney County, Oregon ranchers Dwight and Steve Hammond. Ammon Bundy, the leader of the group, said he had led the action after receiving a divine message from God ordering him to do so. Following the start of the occupation, the occupiers announced they had organized themselves into a new group called Citizens for Constitutional Freedom.

Despite their imprisonment being the stated casus belli of the dispute, the Hammonds have repeatedly rejected the intervention of militias with the wife of Dwight Hammond stating “I don’t really know the purpose of the guys who are out there.”

Some of the militia members stated that they were ready to “kill and be killed”. The takeover sparked a debate on the meaning of the word “terrorist”.

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Origins of dispute

Dwight Hammond, a cattle rancher in Harney County, owns 12,000 acres (4,900 ha) of land, much of which abuts public land. In 1994, Hammond and his son Steve obstructed the construction of a fence to delineate the boundary between the two parcels of property, prompting their arrest by federal agents. According to federal officials, construction of the fence was needed to stop the Hammond cattle from moving along a cattle trail that intersected public land after the Hammonds had repeatedly violated the terms of their permit, which limited when they could move their cows across refuge property. Officials also reported Hammond had made threats against them in 1986 and 1988, including telling one public lands manager that he was going to “tear off his head and shit down his neck”. They also contended Steve Hammond had called them “assholes”. The Hammonds, however, countered by noting that the cattle trail in question was a historic route that had been continuously used since 1871. Following their release from jail on recognizance, a rally attended by 500 other cattle ranchers was held in support of the Hammonds in Burns, and then-congressman Robert Freeman Smith wrote a letter of protest to the United States Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt. Voters successfully recalled two members of the Harney County Court in anger that it had not intervened on the Hammonds’ behalf. Charges against the Hammonds were later dropped.

In 1999, Steve Hammond started a fire with the intent of burning off juniper trees and sagebrush, but the fire escaped onto BLM land. The agency reminded Hammond of the required burn permit and that if the fires continued, there would be legal consequences. Both Dwight and Steve Hammond would later on set two additional fires that would lead to arson convictions.

Hammond arson case

Dwight and Steve Hammond were convicted of arson by their peers in 2012 for setting fires on federal land adjacent to their property near Burns in 2001 and 2006. In 2001, according to Probation Officer Robb, hunters in the area witnessed the Hammonds illegally shooting deer and shortly afterwards a fire forced them to leave the area. Later, Steve’s nephew Dusty Hammond claimed under testimony that his uncle told him to start lighting matches and “light the whole countryside on fire.” Dusty also testified that he was “almost burned up in the fire” and had to flee for his life and was later abused by Steve. According to the Hammonds, they set the fire to stop invasive plants from growing onto their grazing fields. The 2006 fire was an illegal backburn set under the cover of night knowing beforehand that a firefighting camp was on the slopes above. According to the indictment, the fire threatened to trap four BLM firefighters, one of whom later confronted Dwight Hammond at the fire scene after having moved his crews to avoid the threat.

Following their conviction, federal prosecutors requested a five-year sentence for each of the Hammonds as provided for under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). The AEDPA provides that arson on federal land carries a five-year mandatory minimum sentence. U.S. District Judge Michael Robert Hogan determined sentences of that length “would shock the conscience” and would violate the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Hogan instead sentenced Dwight Hammond to three months’ imprisonment and Steve Hammond to a year and a day’s imprisonment, which both men served. Federal prosecutors successfully appealed the sentence to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which upheld the mandatory-minimum law, writing that “given the seriousness of arson, a five-year sentence is not grossly disproportionate to the offense.” The court vacated the original sentence and remanded for resentencing. The Hammonds filed petitions for certiorari with the Supreme Court, which the court rejected in March 2015. In October 2015, Chief Judge Ann Aiken re-sentenced the pair to five years in prison (with credit for time served), ordering that they return to prison on January 4, 2016. Both of the Hammonds reported to prison in California on January 4th in accordance with the law.

In a separate 2014 civil judgment, the Hammonds were ordered to pay $400,000 in restitution to the U.S. government for the related arson fires. The pair paid half the amount immediately and the remaining $200,000 in December 2015.