Posted on 02/05/2005 4:19:04 AM PST by foolscap
OWYHEE COUNTY, Idaho (AP) - Idaho's most infamous outlaw, Claude Dallas, killed two state officers in a remote desert 24 years ago in a crime that brought him notoriety as both a callous criminal and a modern-day mountain man at odds with the government. Now a bespectacled 54-year-old, Dallas is to be released from prison Sunday after serving nearly 22 years for the execution-style slayings of Conley Elms and Bill Pogue, officers for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.
The case has been among the most polarizing in Idaho history, with some expressing disgust at how Dallas has gained a measure of folk-hero status among those who rally against the establishment.
Some compared him to Gordon Kahl, a tax-evader killed by U.S. marshals in North Dakota in 1983; to Randy Weaver, the protagonist in the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff; or even to Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.
"Those cases always end up getting connected after the fact," said Jess Walter, the Spokane, Wash.-based author of a book about Weaver. "But at the time, they were just having trouble with law enforcement."
Dallas' 1986 jailbreak only heightened the legend perpetuated by his friends, that his rugged lifestyle got crossways with a heavy-handed U.S. government. Dallas hid for nearly a year before he was caught and sent back to prison.
"It's sure an emotional issue, and his release has heightened those emotions," said Jon Heggen, head of the Fish and Game Department's enforcement bureau. "There's been a lot of tears shed the last two weeks."
Dallas' 30-year sentence was cut by eight years for good behavior.
He was convicted of manslaughter in 1982 for shooting the officers, who had entered his winter camp on the South Fork of the Owyhee River, one of the West's least-populated regions, to investigate reports of illegal trapping.
Jim Stevens, a friend of Dallas who was visiting the camp, witnessed the killings.
According to evidence at the trial, Pogue, who had drawn his own weapon, was hit first with a shot from Dallas' handgun. Dallas then shot Elms two times in the chest as the warden emerged from the trapper's tent, where he'd found poached bobcats.
Dallas then used a rifle to fire one round into each man's head.
The 28-day trial made national headlines, with Dallas claiming the game wardens were out to get him. A group of women - who became known as the "Dallas Cheerleaders" - gathered daily to support him.
A jury of 10 women and two men acquitted Dallas of murder, finding him guilty of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter instead.
"We remain horrified somebody could have gotten manslaughter for cruelly killing our people, and then following it up with shots from a .22 rifle," said former Fish and Game Director Jerry Conley, who testified at Dallas' sentencing.
But one of Dallas' lawyers, Bill Mauk, still sees Dallas as a victim: He fired on the officers after his privacy had been violated and after he was threatened by government agents enforcing game laws he didn't believe applied to him.
Jury foreman Milo M. Moore, a retired shopkeeper, said Dallas might have been freed outright if he hadn't used his .22 caliber rifle. Moore said testimony about Pogue's reputation as a tough-guy lawman influenced the verdict.
"We felt it was self-defense up to a certain point," Moore said in a recent interview. "Had he not shot them in the head, it would have been a different verdict."
Moore said Pogue had come "gunning" for the poacher, and said Pogue was on trial in some jurors' minds more than Dallas.
Dallas' story inspired a television movie, and writer Jack Olsen chronicled the crime in a book called "Give a Boy a Gun."
"Claude Dallas," a ballad written by singer-songwriters Ian Tyson and Tom Russell, and sung by Tyson, romanticizes Dallas' lifestyle and life on the lam, saying: "It took 18 men and 15 months to finally run Claude down. In the sage outside of paradise, they drove him to the ground."
Kevin Kempf, the warden at the Idaho Correctional Institution at Orofino, where Dallas has been since Jan. 15 when he was moved from a Kansas prison, won't say where Dallas will be released.
"He's prepared," Kempf said. "It doesn't appear he's going to be leaving our facility without any direction or without a plan."
Dallas did not respond to interview requests from The Associated Press.
I recall in both of my Ohio police academy classes that a citizen has the legal right to resist an illegal arrest. Of course, most courts do not recognize this right.
The problem will always be, what constitutes an illegal arrest? And, in the end, only the courts (and, maybe, after discussion, legislatures) can decide that.
People do resist arrest passively, for example, anti-war protesters who force the police to pick them up and carry them away to a waiting police van. But I don't know of any instance in which aggressive action against arresting officers has been vindicated in a court of law. Can you think of one?
No, I can't recall a recent or a particular case. I do recall distant cases being cited to me in classes where this did occur. I believe the most recent case law cited was from the depression era.
Which would make sense as government powers multiplied rapidly during the New Deal politics.
Well there is only one story left now. I feel sure the jury took everything into account, the harassment by an agent with a bad reputation for being a bully, the killings, and the rights of the individual to defend himself from unlawful arrest.
I think Dallas has paid his debt to society, but I suspect this isn't the end of it.
Bigger things, like:
No knock raids.
Property seizure.
Disability fraud.
Do you realize the humbers I cited mean that MOST - LITERALLY MOST - not just "most in the sense of more than there should be" but a literal majority of CHP are felony-grade fraudsters.
And you admire those people?
I cited the CHP disability retirement numbers precisely because those numbers are a "broad brush."
The question is: Are cops corrupt as a class, or are there only a few "bad apples." The CHP disability fraud rate shows the apples are bad, the tree is bad, and the orchard is planted on a toxic waste dump.
Or try out these numbers: What is the property crime solution rate in your town? How many employees does your local cop shop have? Now, for a frighteningly LOW number, tell me how many property crimes are solved per head per year. (We'll use a year because per week the number is too close to ZERO).
There are many good reasons to have a bad attitude about cops.
Dallas ritually and coolly executed two men.
The Claude Dallas alternative would be to do away with cops altogether and enforce laws with deadly force personally and privately, according to whatever notion of justice strikes each one of us on any even day.
Really?
There is NO ALTERNATIVE to the corrupt and expensive criminal "justice" system we have? NONE?
Oh < HEADSLAP > I must have MISSED the fact that at the founding, our forefathers absolutely meant this country to have 200,000 armed federales of various species, plus local cops dressed up in black ninja suits amed with machineguns. Yeah, I'm obviously ignorant of the fact that no-knock raids are EXACTLY what the 4th Amendment had in mind, and it only took about 190 years for that wisdom to become evident.
Yup, those whacky revolutionaries looooved those redcoats so much, they wanted our generation to live under the police jackboot.
Or maybe we COULD live without SWAT teams, no knock raids, siezure laws, and the most expensive prison system on Earth and still not be an anarchy? Ya think?
I have no use for either killer.
Nice try, but the jury knew Claude Dallas killed those men. They never denied the obvious, as in the Simpson case.
The jury concluded Dallas was defending himself. Are you saying that when one shoots a known thug, just because that thug is wearing a law enforcement uniform, it isn't possible to be defending yourself?
put them out of their misery,,we do it all the time.
I’m afraid he wouldn’t. Don’t know of any state with the death penalty for manslaughter
mr. dallas’s escape was considered a lawful escape because he was able to prove that his life was in danger if he stayed in the idaho prison,under u.s. law you have a right to protect your life and your families life under all circumstances. did you somehow miss that simple fact or were you one of the corrections officers that were proven to be at fault for the lack of protective abilities or actually tried to have him hit. Try reading something besides the police gazzette. P.S bill pouge threatened to bring him in the “hard way” and was known as a punk,he ran in to someone he thought he had disarmed and when he drew his weopon on a supposedly unarmed person he became no better than a gangmember and he paid the ultimate price unfortunatly.
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