Vol. 81/No. 30 August 14, 2017
Bundy supporter given 68 years for joining
ranchers’ fight
AND DENNIS RICHTER
Burleson was one of several hundred ranchers and others from around the West who joined Cliven Bundy and his family at their Bunkerville, Nevada, ranch in 2014 to defend their right to graze cattle on federal land. A few came with firearms. They joined Bundy in demanding the release of some 400 of his cattle seized by the Bureau of Land Management. Members of the Bundy family had been using these lands since 1877.
Burleson — who is now blind and frail, and spent the entire trial in a wheelchair — was convicted in April on eight frame-up charges, including assault on a federal officer, obstruction of justice, as well as multiple gun charges. He had traveled from his home in Phoenix to join the protest.
An FBI entrapment scheme was central to the prosecution’s case. FBI agents set up Longbow Productions, a fake video company that claimed to be making a documentary on the ranchers’ protest. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that federal agents fed Burleson alcohol before his “interview.” “I said a lot of crazy things,” said Burleson during the trial. “I’m ashamed of them actually.”
“He does not deserve to spend life in prison for exercising his First Amendment rights,” Carol Bundy, Cliven’s wife, said after Burleson was convicted. Terrence Jackson, Burleson’s attorney, told the press they would appeal the ruling, saying it amounts to a death sentence.
There were five other defendants at Burleson’s trial. One, Todd Engel, was convicted on two felonies and will face sentencing in the fall. The jury leaned toward acquitting the other four, but was unable to reach a unanimous verdict. They are now being retried in front of Navarro.
Cliven Bundy, several of his sons and others who protested the BLM’s actions have been denied bail, thrown in jail for over a year, much of it in solitary.
There was no violence during the actions.
The Review-Journal described the judge’s remarks at the sentencing as “lengthy — and at times emotional,” concerning “mental anguish” supposedly inflicted on law enforcement officers by the Bundy protests. It is clear she is out to teach the ranchers a costly lesson.
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