Posted on 06/24/2006 7:19:39 AM PDT by HiJinx
BISBEE (AZ) — It took a (Cochise County) Superior Court jury less than 15 minutes Friday to decide in favor of defendants Roger, Barbara and Donald Barnett in a civil suit that charged them with trespassing on a monastery’s ranch in order to detain a group of illegal immigrants.
And while immigration politics were brought up both overtly and subtly throughout the trial, a juror told the Herald/Review the verdict was reached solely on the legal merits of the trespassing charge.
Donald J. Mackenzie, 65, an official with the Summerland Monastery and the caretaker of its WindTree Ranch in Douglas, brought the suit against the Barnetts after an Oct. 11, 2003, incident in which he found the three defendants with approximately 30 migrant men, women and children at his property’s water well.
Mackenzie alleged that the Barnett men were dressed that day in law enforcement-type outfits. Thinking they were affiliated with the Border Patrol, he left the migrants in their care.
Later, after he determined that one of the men was Roger Barnett, a well-known anti-illegal-immigration activist who says he has performed citizen’s arrests of more than 12,000 migrants, Mackenzie said he became distressed and decided to file charges.
For their part, the Barnetts argued that they had been welcome guests on the property, that they wore civilian clothing, and that they led the migrants to the well because the group was dehydrated and needed water.
According to a jury member who wished to remain anonymous, after three days of testimony in the case, the five-woman, three-man panel voted immediately and unanimously that no trespass had occurred.
After the verdict, Roger Barnett, 63, who faces a second civil trial later this year for allegedly threatening a hunting party with an assault rifle, said he felt relieved that the first case had concluded in his favor.
“It turned out the way I thought it would, although sometimes there are doubts when a jury is involved,” he said. “But our attorneys did a really good job.”
Mackenzie had no comment on the verdict, and his attorney, Jesœs Romo Vejar, said only that the jury had reached its decision and that he and his client would abide by it.
Barbara Barnett, 64, said that justice had been served by the ruling.
“We always stay within the law,” she said. “But (the plaintiff) tried to make this about immigration.”
During closing arguments, the defense argued that the suit had little merit as a trespassing case and instead constituted a crusade to portray the Barnetts as bad people. Romo Vejar argued that the Barnetts had desecrated the WindTree ranch by capturing human beings in violation of the monastery’s sacred beliefs.
Romo Vejar disputed the notion that the Barnetts had come to the WindTree’s well out of concern that the migrants were thirsty, and said that even if the well’s blue flag welcomed people to come and drink, it did not suggest that visitors could linger afterward to capture illegal immigrants.
“(The Barnetts) came to the well to keep and capture prey,” he said, “and nobody allowed them to be there for that purpose.”
Romo Vejar also wondered why, if the Barnetts were so concerned with the welfare of the migrants, they did not carry any extra food or water when they set out in search of the group. And he noted that while there were a number of incident reports at the Sheriff’s Office accusing the Barnetts of abusing illegal immigrants, there was no record of their altruistic behavior.
Answering to charges by the defense that he was trying to act as a special prosecutor of the Barnetts, Romo Vejar said it was well known that the family is too well-connected with local law enforcement to be brought up on criminal charges.
He said that in such circumstances, there were only two available options for victims: civil lawsuits, or, as in the Barnetts’ case, vigilantism.
In his closing argument, Andrew Jacobs, the attorney for Roger and Barbara Barnett, said the jury had been distracted from the trespassing charge with a long list of the defendants’ prior alleged misdeeds.
He characterized the evidence presented by Romo Vejar during the trial as a mean-spirited attempt to convict the Barnetts of being rotten people.
“The truth is, this is a case where all the interesting stuff isn’t important and the important stuff isn’t quite as interesting,” he said.
Jacobs told the jury that in order to charge the Barnetts with trespassing — the truly important matter in the case — Mackenzie would have to both legally possess the property and have the right to exclude people from it. He said that since the Summerland Monastery owned the ranch, Mackenzie only satisfied the second provision.
He also noted that in a pre-trial deposition, Mackenzie had said it would be consistent with the beliefs of his organization if someone brought people to the well as part of a process of repatriating them back to Mexico.
That, said the attorney, was precisely what the Barnetts were doing on Oct. 11, 2003.
Furthermore, Jacobs said that to legally charge someone with trespassing, a plaintiff would have to make an immediate determination that the offense had occurred. Mackenzie, he noted, took weeks or even months before deciding that the Barnetts had not been welcome at the ranch.
Mackenzie’s suit, Jacobs said, “was a science project done after the event took place.”
Peter Akmajian, the attorney for Donald Barnett, also noted the length of time it took Mackenzie to file suit.
“It wasn’t until later on that he got talking with the Border Action Network (a Tucson-based human and migrant rights group) that he started thinking about trespassing,” he said.
“Whatever you may feel about the debate over immigration,” he told the jury, “it doesn’t make this a trespass case.”
Still, Akmajian also presented immigration issues to the jury when he noted that Mackenzie, who was portrayed by Romo Vejar as a man of great decency, does not cooperate with the Border Patrol. Akmajian asked the jurors to consider if it was indeed more decent to allow migrants to continue crossing the perilous Arizona desert than to turn them in to authorities.
He also wondered aloud if people like Mackenzie who put out water stations might be encouraging migrants to cross the border illegally.
In his final response, Romo Vejar challenged the defense’s argument that Mackenzie had no legal basis for the trespassing suit — he said that the monastery’s governing board had passed two internal resolutions granting Mackenzie the right to pursue the case.
And he insisted that the Barnetts’ character and their history of anti-illegal immigration activity were relevant to the case.
“I believe that if everyone in the world were of the same color, nationality, ethnicity and religion, the Barnetts would still find some distinguishing feature that makes them better than others,” he said.
But Judge James Conlogue interrupted and instructed the attorney to stop discussing his personal beliefs.
Afterward, the juror who spoke anonymously with the Herald/Review said jury members felt there had been “a lot of smokescreens thrown up” during the trial, but said the panel only considered evidence related to the particular trespassing charge in reaching their verdict.
“We did what the judge instructed us to do,” the juror said.
Earlier on Friday, Conlogue set Nov. 14 as the starting date for the second civil trial against the Barnetts.
In that case, Ronald Morales of Douglas alleges that Roger Barnett threatened him and his hunting party — which included three girls aged 9, 11 and 11 — with an AR-15 assault rifle after Barnett accused them of trespassing.
We'll keep y'all posted on the next trial as well. Chalk one up for the good guys.
Ping!
I wonder if Ronald Morales could argue that they had been welcome guests on the property, that they wore civilian clothing, and that he led the hunters to the property because the group was hungry and needed food?
A closer look at this Donald Mackenzie might reveal more than a few skeletons in his closet.
Okay. (snicker)
"....wondered aloud if people like Mackenzie who put out water stations might be encouraging migrants to cross the border illegally."
LOL!
Trespass is a central theme to both lawsuits. What isn't mentioned is that the gate between the Barnett's place and Mackenzie's place has a combo lock on it. Mackenzie gave the combination to the Barnetts well before the incident in this case.
In the second lawsuit, the issue may be a bit more murky. According to news reports, the confrontation took place on BLM land that the Barnetts lease.
As I said, I'll be posting articles about the second case when it comes up.
You couldn't be more right. Check out Spiff's link at number 5.
Well that pretty much changes the whole deal! Jonathan and his paper deserve a kick in the pants for leaving that out.
I love your tag line. Not many people speak Gulungan and it is refreshing to read a few words in that language.
Great news!!
So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
Yeah, it is always nice to have a special skill you can fall back on.
ping
Maybe, maybe not. If it was inadmissible in the trial, and it could have been, then it wouldn't have made it into reporting of the trial.
What I find interesting here is that it only took 15 minutes to reach a verdict. It took us almost that long to elect a foreman when I last had the duty...
To you two it is beautiful, meaningful language.
To me, it is just Gunga din.
You are on the right track, old Gunga Din is the one who originated the language. A little bit of information Kipling left out when he wrote the poem!
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