Thursday, May 31, 2018

Editorial - Ordering the Hammonds to serve five years in prison unfair

We are hearing renewed rumblings that action in the clemency cases of Dwight and Steven Hammond is imminent.
President Trump should commute the sentences of the father and son and allow them to return to their Oregon ranch.
Ranchers in Oregon’s Harney County, the Hammonds have a long history of disputes with the Bureau of Land Management over grazing allotments. Dwight Hammond was convicted of one count related to a fire that burned 139 acres of BLM land in 2006. Steven Hammond was convicted of one count related to the 2006 fire, and a separate count related to a fire in 2001.
The Hammonds received a fair trial and were found guilty. Many believe they had just cause to start the fires and deserved no punishment even if they had technically broken the law. The jury found otherwise, and the original trial court handed down fair, and lenient, sentences.
In addition to lengthy probation, Dwight Hammond received six months in prison, his son one year. The original prison sentences were served.
But the government appealed those sentences because the judge ignored the minimum mandatory five-year sentence prescribed by the federal arson statute. The appeals court overturned the original sentence and the trial court ordered the Hammonds to report to a federal prison in California to serve out the remainder of new five-year sentences.
Their case, mostly unnoticed in urban America, drew a lot of attention in the western ranching community where they received a lot of positive support. And some that was less than helpful.
...The original judge in the Hammonds’ case found a mandatory five-year sentence overly punitive given the circumstances of their crimes.
So do we.
Ordering the Hammonds to serve the five-year mandatory sentence, though unquestionably legal under statute, was an injustice.
The Hammonds have been in prison too long. The president should commute their sentences to time served and send them home.

Sly Stallone worked to get former heavyweight champion Jack Johnson pardoned, and Trump just pardoned conservative author Dinesh D'Souza after a visit from Kim Kardashian on prison reform. If that is what it takes, who will advocate for the Hammonds? How bout Tom Selleck, Robert Duvall, Sam Elliot or Tommy Lee Jones?


Or maybe Keifer Sutherland
Image result for headshot kiefer sutherland cowboy hat

Could he get in done in 24 hours?

And what is the lone Republican in the Oregon congressional delegation, Greg Walden, doing on behalf of the Hammonds?

3 comments:

Dave Skinner said...

Unfair? That's not even close. Bloody-minded, vindictive, agenda driven persecution is more like it.
Every day the Hammonds rot is an affront to the Constitution.

Anonymous said...

Just the fact... alone... that they send over 2,000 FBI agents to handle a dozen peaceful protesters... should be seen as obvious that the Feds are desperate to protect something of a much bigger value than sagebrush and sage grouse.

Before going to prison, Ryan Bundy asked Dwight why he won't fight the resentence... Dwight told him that they would put a bullet in him and anybody else that supports them.

....Prophetic..???


Not only was Finicum killed, but 3 nurse's on duty at the hospital he was taken to had all "committed suicide" within a month afterwards.

And also a snowmobiler, who was in the area of the roadblock at the time of Lavoy's murder, was later found shot to death a few weeks later.

It should also be telling that Greg Bretzing, the FBI agent in charge, gets hired a year later by a uranium transport company "The Greenbrier Companies" for a "newly created" security director job.

That company also hired director Wanda Felton, former Obama appointee at Export Import Bank of the U.S. that under her authority, approved a significant portion of financing to U.S. manufacturers of export equipment like which Greenbrier also manufactures & leases.

EXIM Bank lists uranium mining as one of the "key industries" it finances.

They also finance nuclear transport equipment.... Oregon State University has a spinoff company, "NuScale", that invented small modular nuclear reactors that can be transported around the world.... And backed by the likes of Wyden, Walden & Defazio ....who are no friends of the Hammonds.

When the Uranium One scandal resurfaced last fall... Harney county once again gets inundated by FBI ... although no longer body-slamming little old ladies around at roadblocks ...they were making an intimidating presence.

And apparently still are ...an acquaintance of a friend of mine said the other day that they're closely watching everyone and everything they do.

...ya think that might have anything to do with the FBI scandal going now on in Washington?

Everything the FBI, media & their ilk are doing to Trump, they have done to the Hammonds.

In both Oregon & Washington... they are equally desperate to keep the truth from getting out...

Could it be that "They" contain the same names that tie in to both Oregon & Washington...???







Anonymous said...

Tommy Lee Jones won't do it, he's a lib.