Federal judge dismisses charges against US militia group

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Federal judge dismisses charges against US militia group

March 28, 2012 08:45:23 am

[JURIST] Judge Victoria Roberts of the US District Court in the Eastern District of Michigan [official website] on Tuesday issued an order [text, PDF] dismissing the case against Hutaree [CNN backgrounder; JURIST news archive] militia members before it was submitted to a jury. Roberts held that the government did not sufficiently prove the elements of the charges of seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and other weapons related charges in the case of United States v. Stone [case docket]. The government asserted that the Hutaree militia’s primary aim was to fight law enforcement authorities who belonged to the “New World Order” with the goal of drawing federal law enforcement into a war. Lawyers for the Hutaree militia maintained that the anti-government statements made by militant members were not serious threats and were made only in frustration. In her order, Roberts wrote:

The Government has consistently maintained that this case is not about freedom of speech or association, but about the specific acts of violence alleged in the Indictment. … However, much of the Government’s evidence against Defendants at trial was in the form of speeches, primarily by Stone, Sr., who frequently made statements describing law enforcement as the enemy, discussing the killing of police officers, and the need to go to war.

The order contained a specific articulation of the various charges and explained the shortcomings of the government’s prosecution.

The trial began [JURIST report] in Robert’s courtroom in February. In May 2010 Roberts granted bail for the nine members of the group. Roberts ruled that bail would be granted [JURIST report] but that the eight men and one woman must relinquish weapons and weapons permits, remain confined to their homes and be kept under electronic surveillance. The group members allegedly planned to kill Michigan law enforcement officers by, among other methods, making phony 911 calls and ambushing those who responded. There is some evidence that right-wing nativist and so-called “patriot” anti-government militias such as the Hutaree are on the rise in the US. A 2009 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) [advocacy website] noted that these groups are making a comeback [JURIST report] after declining for a number of years. The SPLC said that such groups are generally anti-tax, anti-immigration, and increasingly racially motivated since the election of the country’s first African-American president, Barack Obama. The SPLC also warned that these groups could soon pose a security risk to the country, quoting one official as saying “[a]ll it’s lacking is a spark. I think it’s only a matter of time before you see threats and violence.”

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.