Authorities in Northern California last week announced the arrest of a woman who they say ignited a wind-whipped wildfire that quickly tore through steep, rugged terrain, destroying 144 buildings, prompting the evacuation of thousands of people and becoming one of the state's more destructive blazes this year.
The womalexandra Souverneva, 30, a onetime yoga teacher from the San Francisco Bay Area whom a former colleague recalled as "brilliant," is among more than 100 people who have been accused of wildland arson and arrested this year by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.
The charge alleges a rare but significant act that has come into sharper focus as parched, overgrown forests explode across thousands of acres in days...MORE
After a two-week trial in July of 2012, Oregon rancher Dwight Hammond, 73, and his son Steven Hammond, 46, were found guilty of setting fires that caused damage to federal property. One fire burned 139 acres of federal land, the other only 1 acre. The Hammonds claimed the fires were for range management purposes, the federal prosecutors said they were set for more nefarious reasons. Now-retired U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan sentenced Steven Hammond to one year and a day in prison for setting intentional fires in 2001 and 2006, and ordered Dwight Hammond to spend three months behind bars for his involvement in the 2001 blaze.
That should have been the end of the story. But it wasn’t.
The feds appealed claiming the ranchers should have received mandatory sentences of five years. They had charged the ranchers with violation of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.
That’s right, the feds were using a law aimed at terrorists to prosecute the ranchers and that law required the mandatory sentences. Judge Hogan had ruled that 5-year sentences would “shock the conscience”, would be grossly disproportionate to the offenses committed and violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the feds, however, and returned the case for sentencing. On October 7 of this year, both Hammonds received the mandatory minimum sentence of five years for deliberately setting fires that spread from their property onto federal land. For comparison, other federal laws that carry five-year minimum sentences are for treason, child pornography, using a gun while committing a violent crime or importing drugs.
The ranchers set backfires to protect their own property, accidently burn a total of 140 acres of federal property and they are labeled as terrorists.
She sets a fire that burns thousands of acres, destroys 144 buildings and forces thousands to evacuate, but is not charged or labeled as a terrorist?
Actually, neither is, but this just demonstrates the glaring inappropriateness of the charges against the ranchers.
The ranchers should have claimed they were former yoga teachers and were just protecting the karma of their cattle.
Whoopy ti yi yoga!
5 comments:
The Yoga teacher is just the tip of the arson effort all across California and the NW USA. Very little reporting on arson and wildland fires but there is more than meets the eye. It is probably eskimo's setting the fires, who else would?
Yes indeed, the yoga teacher should be tried as an arson terrorist, just as the Hammonds were. However Mr. Dubois always conveniently leaves out the human lives that were endangered by some of those fires set by the Hammonds and how they were glad to take the five year sentences since they could have gotten 20 years. If they wear a cowboy hat they must be okay. Not a very objective way of looking at the world. I hope the yoga teacher pays the full penalty of the law, even if the Hammonds didn't.
Dexter...Do I usually take the side of the rancher? Of course, and I make no secret of that. Do I always take their side? Nope, when they go groveling to the gov't for protection or subsidies, I oppose that and have done so here on this blog.
My point was that neither should be tried as terrorists under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. This demonstrates another concern I have expressed here, and that is the "creep" of these antiterrorism laws. The same problem occurs with the Drug War laws. They are sold as fighting the terrorists or drug dealers, but are then used mostly to prosecute others, civil liberties be damned.
Dexter...I forgot to say thank you for taking the time to comment. I appreciate that.
Frank...Thanks for the explanation. I heartily agree that the feds allow these laws to "creep" into something they were never initially meant to be but the Hammond's, father and son, after careful review of the facts and history seemed to warrant a law with some real heft to it after their actions endangered multiple human lives. I never see that in print. The same degree of punishment goes for the (alleged) yoga instructor arsonist. Could the prosecutors find such a legal avenue that doesn't fall under a terrorism statute, maybe, I don't know, luckily not being a member of the seriously corrupt legal profession.
I quite often take the side of ranchers too, although I wear an "Action Wildlife Services" cap not a Stetson, in matters such as Mexican gray wolf reintroduction, "critical" jaguar habitat designation, and the like and have written about a lot of it for CJ Hadley's RANGE Magazine. I just try to keep a balanced, objective mindset as I monitor the human circus passing by.
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