filings can and do become frivolous abuses of the system. After a number of adverse court decisions, let plaintiffs open a gofundme account and decide to use the donations to pay for attorneys or to fund a post-prisonl retirement. The SPLC, ACLU, and a number of others are available to petition for support if the case is valid.

Sorry, but even "really guilty" people get to defend themselves.

I have not updated on what's happening these days. I was just reacting to how long he has been jerking around taxpayers in general.

Or funded by some nutcase group.

https://www.google.com/?ion=1&espv=2#q=Lissa+Casey

DUI Attorney!


Interview with Ammon Bundy's Lawyers

<snip>

Jennifer: "You provided me this morning with an exclusive look this morning at a fund--the Ammon Defense Fund. Is this something that is normal in these cases that you would solicit funds for a defense?"

Mike Arnold: "I think it is becoming more normal, Crowdfunding is kind of the new process for citizen activism and citizen protest, so this is something from the Funded Justice website. There used to be another website available--for instance, the GoFundMe sites. They no longer do funding for litigation, so this is for citizen activists, so this is a good way for folks. And, hopefully, we will get enough bail raised so he can go home and start working and raise money for his defense."

- See more at: http://www.kezi.com/news/366852171.html#sthash.4MAaxUdl.dpuf

Pony up suckers!

https://www.fundedjustice.com/en/projects/28054-Ammon-Bundy---Legal-Defense-Fund

Which begs the question why they would expect the courts to side with them when they know their views are out of the norm and against the "establishment" but "establishment" courts make the decision.

This is the stupidness of their thinking.

This is no doubt some more of that sovereign citizen rubbish.

downhill, indeed.

hey Mr. Bundy, do you think there might be an off chance the law doesn't say what you think it says?
uh huh.

You'd think his lawyers would be smart enough to know this, but I'm sure their attitude is such that as long as they stand a chance of getting paid by funds donated by morans, they don't really care if he swings or not.

So if an argument has failed dozens of times for decades, no one should make it again. Is that correct?

"Similar arguments have been made by other defendants . . . without much success." Yeah, that's what's going to happen again. And it will keep happening until these knuckleheads hire attorneys who actually know the law instead of their ideological compatriots who keep trying to argue what they'd like the law to be.

Nitwits. Toss the attorneys in the slammer overnight just for being such irretrievable tools.

a license to practice in the first place.

I'd guess they were cum laude graduates of the Liberty University law degree mill.

Since there is a specific Supreme Court case holding this refuge land is under the control of the federal government, I think her motion amounts to a frivolous pleading and would warrant sanctions.

before Marbury vs Madison and pretend the Marshall and all subsequent supreme courts never existed

They are part of a fringe group of Fundamentalist Mormons who want to reinstate the sovereign state of Deseret as a Mormon state outside the control and authority of the US Federal Government c

It is no accident that they chose the Malheur Refuge It was the Mormon attempt to steal Payute land within what is now the Malheur Refuge which led to federal troops being sent to the area to stop them, resulting in the so called Utah war

In spite of what they say the LDS has never recognized the authority of the US government over them

The Bundys are just acting according to what they have been taught all their lives

Their specious claim of sovereign citizenship and statehood is confounded by over 200 years of case law and multiple treaties

Standing in front of a Federal judge and saying, "You ain't the boss of me" is not a defense against a charge of armed extortion

If it was, smarter criminals would have used it long before now

So he has nothing to lose by trying anything out of desperation.

Ask yourself: If you were Ammon Bundy's defense lawyer, what would YOU do? This may be the best-documented crime in the history of American jurisprudence. The prosecution has defendants' own videos, other people's videos, defendants' tweets, I think they had a website, photographs, and scores of media people and law enforcement officers who can provide eyewitness testimony. Your client held multiple press conferences in which he discussed his crime.

The argument about federal land ownership is rubbish but it's still better than anything I can come up with.

Yeah, sometimes an argument loses ten times before it wins, and sometimes an argument just keeps on losing.

But in general, calls for "Justice" on DU are actually calls for a desired verdict and, hopefully, some kind of extreme punishment. They are never calls for the process to work itself out.

Bundy is, in all likelihood, going up the river unless the government does something stupid.

But people on DU are generally displeased that criminals are entitled to defend themselves along the way. It's simply about the result.

Idiots occupying a wildlife refuge because of some belief of theirs? Lock em up. Idiots occupying an interstate highway because of some belief of theirs - bold civil rights heroes. It doesn't matter whether the law is only concerned with conduct. What matters on DU is whether one agrees with the political views of those engaging in it.

Bundy is a pathetic loser and that's all he and his gang will ever amount to. But that's not enough for people who need a justice system characterized by vindictiveness.

Sorry, the Bundys essentially mounted an armed insurrection against the United States. Yes they are entitled to a defense but it has to be did they break the law or not - not whether the federal government has the right to own land - that is not a valid defense.

"Yes they are entitled to a defense but it has to be did they break the law or not"

Well that's just nonsense, in terms of how our legal system is structured.

Are you saying that Lawrence v. Texas should have been decided on "did they break the law or not"?

You have the right to challenge the basis of the law, even if you are stupid, and even if there is slim (to put it mildly) chance of success.

You can challenge the basis of a law if you have a "good faith" basis. "Did they break the law or not" has never been, nor should it be, the standard by which cases are judged.

I don't doubt the sincerity of their belief, and they have a right to have an attorney argue what they sincerely believe. That doesn't only apply to people who are correct. It also applies to people who are very, very misguided.

Was the Wounded Knee situation "an armed occupation of federal land"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_incident

Distinguish these two things, without reference to the substance of the beliefs and grievances of the occupiers.

The Bundy gang never asserted that they had a claim to the land in question. They were trying to claim the land on behalf of someone else - local ranchers. So they do not have "standing" to challenge federal government ownership. When it comes to trial, the standard is going to be "did the defendants break the law?" The "basis of the law" stuff will get tossed out. The defendants will no doubt appeal that but they will lose the appeal.

....which is why I asked to distinguish them without reference to the substantive claims.

They have this nitwit reading of the Constitution which, they sincerely believe, limits the ability of the federal government to own property at all, except for specific purposes in the Constitution.

Are they wrong? Sure. Will their argument get any traction? No. But the larger principle here is that criminal defendants have the right to counsel in order to argue their belief that the charges against them are based on a Constitutional wrong. Most of the people on this thread seem positively offended by that.

What people don't understand is that obtaining solid criminal convictions depends, in large part, on letting defendants get their jollies out of the way in preliminary motions.


"When it comes to trial, the standard is going to be "did the defendants break the law?" The "basis of the law" stuff will get tossed out."

This is nowhere near trial. What the commenters on DU want is to skip right to the trial, and have them appeal on the basis of "we wanted to make a Constitutional argument, but our lawyer refused to do that", and get off on ineffective assistance of counsel.

Problem is that as far as I can tell, the Bundys want the court to revisit settled law in terms of Federal ownership of land. It IS frivolous in that sense. However they can make the motion. And the judge can reject it, citing the appropriate precedents. There really will be no basis for appeal unless higher courts see a compelling reason to over turn the precedents, which is quite unlikely. I doubt that any federal court would hear the appeal let alone the SCOTUS.

Thing is, at that point, these kinds of arguments are off the table and I am suspicious that the Bundys are unlikely to accept that - they want to turn this into a show trial of Federal government land policy. They should not be permitted to do that. The willingness of the Bundy lawyers to file this kind of motion now makes me wonder if they are skillful enough to navigate between the Bundy fantasies and what the law requires.

Well, the first level of appeal to the circuit is by right and, no, SCOTUS won't pick it up. But, again, the larger issue is whether one has a right to representation for one's sincerely held belief.

Bowers v. Hardwick was "settled law".

Plessey v. Ferguson was "settled law" - heck, "separate but equal" was a longstanding principle for decades, and one could have said that Brown v. Board was "off the table".

You just can't decide people's procedural rights on the basis of "do I agree with them on substance".

"to navigate between the Bundy fantasies and what the law requires"

The law requires zealous representation of their client.

"Re-visiting settled law" is what we do in this country. Not everyone wins.

They're being criminally prosecuted. That certainly gives them standing.

I assume that one element of the crime with which they're charged is that the Refuge land was owned by the federal government. Therefore, a criminal defendant may argue that the land was not owned by the federal government. That argument will be considered on its merits (and won't take long) and rejected, but will not be ignored on the basis of standing.

Which is what they were trying to do - going so far as tearing down a fence to allow a local rancher to move his cattle onto the land. Should also note that they are also basically making a claim of ownership of the land for the state of Oregon and they lack the standing to do that also because they are not the state of Oregon.

Their claim is that the federal government doesn't lawfully own the land.

They don't have to establish that anyone else in particular owns the land in order to challenge the charges on the basis of their claim that the federal government doesn't own the land.

If I sue you for trespassing, and you have an argument that I don't own the land, then it doesn't matter who else you think might own the land, because an element of the trespassing claim is that I do own it.

A solid conviction requires proof of every element. This element will be proven, but I just don't understand the argument that they are somehow not entitled to raise their silly defense in a preliminary legal motion. Knocking that down is just one less opportunity for a post-conviction appeal.

Defense challenges to criminal prosecutions make the ultimate convictions STRONGER. I don't see why there should be any disagreement on that.

You know how these things play out.

If the motion is peremptorily dismissed, then the claim is "THEY WEREN'T ALLOWED TO DEFEND THEMSELVES!"

It's like the Mumia folks who go on about "he was silenced in court and denied a lawyer" because (a) he wanted to make it a circus and (b) he wanted an idealogue with no legal background as his "attorney".

I'd much rather see a court decision that definitively knocks down their lunacy, so that all of the other SovCit "legal scholars" get a chance to see how their delusions play out in real life.

The judge needs to consider the motion, then dismiss it, citing the appropriate precedents.

The Bundy crime was not simple trespass. It was attempting to seize the land on behalf of local ranchers and the state of Oregon (though that was probably an add on after the fact). Actually I am not so sure that "on behalf of local ranchers" was not an add on. I really think the Bundy's were playing out some kind of Sovereign Citizen, Local Sheriff is the highest authority, nonsense - basically an armed insurrection. The interesting thing is that when the local sheriff did not cooperate, they turned on him and tried to change it to "any sheriff who agrees with us."

And in terms of "settled law" I go back to the standing question. The only entity which would have the standing to challenge the long standing precedent of the Federal government's right to own land in Oregon would be the state of Oregon itself, not the Bundys. And of course if Oregon were to challenge that precedent, the way to do it would be through litigation, not armed insurrection. Hopefully we learned something from the Civil War.

Lawyers are officers of the court. Yes they have to represent their clients as vigorously as possible. But they do not have to - and should not indulge a client's fallacious legal theories.

On the one hand, you're right that lawyers have an obligation not to make frivolous arguments.

On the other hand, you also acknowledge the lawyers' obligation to represent their clients zealously. These two obligations aren't always easy to reconcile.

Take the example of the civil rights movement. In the 1940s and early 1950s, it was clearly settled law that segregation was permissible if the races were provided with "separate but equal" facilities. That had been established by a decision of the Supreme Court, Plessy v. Ferguson, back in 1896. You can't get any "settled law" more settled than a decision of the United States Supreme Court that's directly on point. If Thurgood Marshall and the other NAACP lawyers had been prohibited from challenging settled law, we'd still have segregated schools.

A lawyer is permitted to advance a position that's contrary to current law if it's supported by a good-faith argument for a change in the law. That's how we got Brown v. Board of Education with its famous declaration that separate facilities are inherently UNequal. Marshall argued that Plessy was just wrong. The Supreme Court agreed and took the rare step of overruling one of its prior decisions.

If you're tempted to look at crackpot right-wing theories and say that no one could advance them in good faith, bear in mind that plenty of white supremacists would have said the same about court-ordered desegregation. I personally favor giving lawyers a lot of latitude to advance novel or unpopular legal theories. Slapping the Bundy lawyers with a sanction for frivolous conduct would make me very uneasy.

As for standing, I can't add to what jberryhill and I have already written. If you don't find it persuasive, we'll just have to disagree on that point.

bet they're missing their funyuns and doritos .

it's jail 4 u

yup

It won't work, of course, but it's all they have.

If they want to play war, there are real ones going on in the middle east, perhaps they should have joined one of those instead of playing chickenhawk here. That's all these people are good for. Sucking on the government teet they proclaim to hate.

of overgrown teet suckers, a bunch of moronis.

own hand. The videos, the press conferences etc.

All legal maneuvers at this point are just Hail Mary passes.

The legal process is slow, methodical and will slowly crush him and his pack like a stream-roller going at one mile an hour.

In some ways, this is a form of slow torture for them. Seriously enjoy watching them squirm.

I am sure his attys have told him what he is really facing.

Financially he will lose everything. He'll be lucky to be sleeping on someone's couch fifteen - twenty years from now.

Exactly. What's the rush? It's not like they are out on bail.

They flushed their lives down the toilet. They get to contemplate that 24/7.

that the feds do not have the right to prosecute. The people who think like bundy do not have a clue as to who owns that land. WE the PEOPLE.

He says the federal government cannot own land. My city owns the parks, my country also owns parkland etc., my state has a great deal of property. And somehow the federal government cannot?

already settled this matter re Malheur

Either they are stupid or just looking for publicity or they are trying to stall the proceedings against the Bundys

Or all three of the above