Glenn Beck: Re-Sentencing Oregon Ranchers Is ‘Double Jeopardy’

The Blaze ^ | 1-4-16 | Tre Goins-Phillips

[taraytarah]

Amid peaceful protests and the occupation of a national wildlife refuge building in Oregon, Glenn Beck said Monday that ranchers Steven and Dwight Hammond should not go to jail again but the judge who originally sentenced them should.

"They received their sentence. They went and they served their sentence. They paid their due, as according to a judge," Beck said on The Glenn Beck Radio Program. "If the judge broke the law, then the judge needs to go to jail."

Dwight Hammond, 73, and Steven Hammond, 46, have been charged with arson for fires they said they lit in 2001 and 2006 in order to reduce the growth of invasive plants and protect their property from wildfires. The fires crossed into federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management, but the Hammonds ultimately contained and extinguished them.

Three years ago, U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan, who is now retired, sentenced the father, Dwight Hammond, to three months in prison and the son, Steven Hammond, to one year.

Hogan had reduced the Hammonds' sentences from the five-year minimum required because he said it would have violated the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, adding that it would have been "grossly disproportionate to the severity of the offenses here."

In October of last year, after both men had served their sentences, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken deemed the father-son duo's time served to be too short under federal law and ordered them back to prison Monday, Jan. 4, to serve out the remainder of the five-year minimum sentence...

[DiogenesLamp]

You really ought to read up more on a subject before you start offering your opinion for consideration. The evidence makes it appear as if the BLM is deliberately targeting them as a vendetta.

This stuff didn't start in 2001, it started in the 1970s.

(a2) During the 1970's the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), in conjunction with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), took a different approach to get the ranchers to sell. Ranchers were told: "grazing was detrimental to wildlife and must be reduced"; 32 out of 53 permits were revoked and many ranchers were forced to leave. Grazing fees were raised significantly for those who were allowed to remain. Refuge personnel took over the irrigation system claiming it as their own.

(a3) By 1980 a conflict was well on its way over water allocations on the adjacent privately owned Silvies Plain. The FWS wanted to acquire the ranch lands on the Silvies Plain to add to their already vast holdings. Refuge personnel intentionally diverted the water bypassing the vast meadow lands, directing the water into the rising Malheur Lakes. Within a few short years the surface area of the lakes doubled. Thirty-one ranches on the Silvies plains were flooded. Homes, corrals, barns and graze-land were washed a way and destroyed. The ranchers who once fought to keep the FWS from taking their land, now broke and destroyed, begged the FWS to acquire their useless ranches. In 1989 the waters began to recede; now the once thriving privately owned Silvies plains are a proud part of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge claimed by the FWS.

But then you always were a fan of FedZilla.

[DoodleDawg]

This stuff didn't start in 2001, it started in the 1970s.

No, it started in 1999 when they first started setting their fires.

But then you always were a fan of FedZilla.

No, just not a supporter of firebugs.

[DiogenesLamp]

You are an idiot. You have a tiny little mind that is incapable of grasping anything more complicated than a cup of coffee. You are the exact sort of simple minded fool that brought people like Hitler into power.

You are a follower of the Uber Stadt. You appear ill fitted for a conservative website.

No. It started in the 1970s when the FEDZILLA was trying to steal their and their neighbor's land, and FEDZILLA has been messing with them ever since. Grow the F*** up!