Ambush at Ruby Ridge How government agents set Randy Weaver up and took his family down

Perhaps it was inevitable that the longest federal trial in Idaho history would be followed by the longest jury deliberation in such a trial–a 20-daymarathon that had news people joking about whether the jury planned to put in for retirement benefits. The eight-week trial of Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris grew out of such a bizarre set of circumstances that it’s not surprising it took a while for the jurors to sort things out. It probably also took them a while to come to grips with the idea that government agencies could so blatantly engage in entrapment, lying, cover-ups, and the killing of innocent people. As one alternate juror, excused before deliberations were completed, put it: "I felt like a little kid that finds out there is no Santa Claus".

On July 8, 1993, in what The New York Times called "a strong rebuke of the Government’s use of force during an armed siege," a jury in Boise found Randy Weaver, 45 and almost always described in the media as a "white separatist," and family friend Kevin Harris, 25, not guilty on six of eight counts, including murder of a U.S. marshal, conspiracy to provoke a confrontation with the government, aiding and abetting murder, and harboring a fugitive.

Weaver was found guilty on two minor counts: failure to appear on an earlier firearms charge and violating conditions of bail on the same count. As of this writing, he is still in custody, with sentencing scheduled for September 28. Although the maximum sentence for the two crimes is 15 years, his sentence is likely to be about a year, roughly the amount of time he has already served. Kevin Harris went free the day of the verdict.

The story behind the Weaver/Harris verdict began with government entrapment and continued through 16 months of armed surveillance of Weaver’s cabin in the steep, heavily wooded Selkirk Mountains near Naples, about 40 miles south of the Canadian border in the rural "panhandle" region of northern Idaho. It climaxed in a bloody shootout that left three people dead, including Weaver’s wife, Vicki, killed by an FBI sniper as she stood in the door of the cabin holding her 10- month-old baby. In the wake of the shootout, federal agents offered shifting and contradictory accounts of the events.

READ MORE:http://reason.com/archives/1993/10/01/ambush-at-ruby-ridge