Oregon Live – by Maxine Bernstein
Ammon Bundy wants to inspect and copy court records regarding the selection of a grand jury that returned a federal indictment against him and the selection of jurors summoned for his September trial, his lawyer wrote in a new motion.
He has also requested all emails, text messages, handwritten notes, files, voicemail messages, logs and other communications used by the court in connection with the jury selection process, according to the motion filed by attorney Marcus Mumford.
His attorney signals in the motion that inspection of the jury selection records could reveal grounds to delay a Sept. 7 trial, move the trial to another district court within Oregon “or some other venue entirely,” challenge the jury before a trial or dismiss the pending indictments.
Prosecutors oppose Mumford’s motion, noting that the trial judge already addressed these issues and ruled on them, according to court records.
Nine of 26 defendants have pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to impede federal officers at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge stemming from a 41-day occupation of the federal wildlife sanctuary this winter. Eight defendants have been granted the right to delay their trials. Scheduled to go to trial in September are co-defendants Ammon Bundy, Ryan Bundy, Joseph O’Shaugnessy, Peter Santilli, Kenneth Medenbach, Shawna Cox, David Fry, Jeff Banta and Neil Wampler.
U.S. District Court Judge Anna J. Brown previously denied a similar motion by Ammon Bundy’s brother Ryan Bundy, who had sought to inspect grand jury records. He had sought to review whether the grand jurors were selected from the vicinity of the alleged offense in Harney County.
Brown denied the motion as moot and pointed to a report provided by the court’s jury administrator, which gave a breakdown of the number of grand jurors from each Oregon county who were on the panels that returned the indictments in the alleged conspiracy case.
The judge had also refused to delay the scheduled Sept. 7 trial and denied a motion to try the case elsewhere.
A grand jury March 8 returned the superseding indictment against Ammon Bundy and 25 other defendants accused of unlawfully occupying the refuge.
The grand jury included 21 jurors pulled from the Portland juror management division, with six jurors from Clackamas County; nine from Multnomah County; four from Washington County; and one from Yamhill County. One juror from Umatilla County attended from the the Pendleton juror management division, according to the report by Teresa D. Glover, jury administrator for the federal District of Oregon.
Ammon Bundy’s lawyer contends the judge’s ruling in response to Ryan Bundy’s motion was wrong. While the jury administrator for the federal court district gave a summary of which county grand jurors were from, the court did not allow defendants actual inspection of grand jury records, which Mumford argues they have a right to do.
“In this case, the right to inspect jury selection records is more urgent now, given the pendency of the September trial date,” Mumford wrote.
Brown already directed the court to summon 1,500 potential jurors from all divisions of the Oregon federal district court, not only from the Portland division for the Sept. 7 jury selection process.
Brown ruled that while media coverage of the takeover of the refuge has been extensive, she concluded it has not prejudiced the defendants. Whether the court can seat an impartial jury, she said, will be determined during the voir dire process.
But Mumford said the judge’s ruling came before several defendants entered guilty pleas to the conspiracy charge in court, and were asked to describe their offenses in court. Her May ruling also came before last week’s detention hearing for Ryan Bundy, in which a prosecutor “gratuitously characterized” Bundy’s alleged plan to escape from jail using torn bed sheets braided into a 12- to 15-foot rope, Mumford wrote. Bundy told the court the escape allegation was “simply not true.”
Brown has given the government until Wednesday to respond to Mumford’s motion, then she’ll decide if she has enough information to issue a ruling or allow for oral argument.
— Maxine Bernstein
http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/07/ammon_bundys_lawyer_wants_to_i.html
He has every right to inspect all records related to his “charges” under the system that masquerades as the de jure article 3 courts of law we are guaranteed by the constitution.
The only reason the information would be resisted in disclosure is if the facts exposed that “the fix is in”.
Hang all traitors, without mercy and with extreme prejudice.