Cliven Bundy’s lawyer shows pre-standoff scuffle videos
(Update: Defense attorney gives opening statement)
LAS VEGAS (AP) – Jurors got their first look Tuesday afternoon at videos of confrontations that Cliven Bundy’s lawyer says provided the catalyst for an April 2014 armed standoff with federal agents and a federal trial now underway for the Nevada rancher, two sons and a co-defendant.
One clip showed Bundy’s sister knocked to the ground by a federal agent. Another showed Bundy’s son, David Bundy, taken to the ground and arrested while taking photos of armed men with guns near the Bundy ranch six days before the standoff.
A third showed an agent zapping Bundy son Ammon Bundy with a stun gun when he used an ATV to block a dump truck that attorney Bret Whipple said Tuesday was hauling irrigation equipment that the government illegally ripped from arid public range where the family grazed cattle.
Whipple told jurors that in the end, they will be the ones to decide whether crimes were committed during what he says amounted to peaceful protests.
Earlier in the day, a prosecutor told jurors that Cliven Bundy and followers won the armed standoff with U.S. agents through use-of-force and violence “at the end of a gun.”
Acting U.S. Attorney Steven Myhre gave his two-hour opening summary of the case against Bundy, two of his sons and a co-defendant, casting the Nevada rancher as the leader of a conspiracy involving militia members and men, women and children.
Myhre said evidence will show they had a common objective – to get Bundy cattle back from federal agents trying to enforce lawful court orders to remove his cows from public rangeland for non-payment of grazing fees and penalties.
Bundy doesn’t recognize federal authority over land in U.S. states.
Whipple said that no one conspired with anyone in what amounted to a peaceful protest near Bunkerville, about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas.
Myhre said the case is about violence and the use of guns.
The trial is expected to take four months.
Defense lawyers say the four men didn’t wield weapons and that no shots were fired in the standoff.
Prosecutors allege the 71-year-old Bundy, sons Ryan and Ammon Bundy, and Ryan Payne led a self-styled militia to stop federal agents at gunpoint from enforcing court orders to remove Bundy’s cattle from public rangeland.
Bundy refuses to pay grazing fees to a federal government that he maintains has no authority over land in the states.
Federal prosecutors have twice failed to win full convictions at trial of the men who had guns during the tense confrontation.
The four defendants sought to be released to a halfway house during trial.
The judge on Monday granted the request only to Ryan Bundy. He’s serving as his own attorney and argued he was hampered in preparing his case in jail.
