Posted on 03/12/2002 8:11:10 AM PST by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
RENO -- A Nevada rancher convicted twice for trespassing cattle on national forest land was sentenced Monday to a halfway house for 30 days and to house arrest for three months.
Cliff Gardner, 63, of Ruby Valley, also was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine and placed on probation for a year for his latest conviction in an 8-year feud with the Forest Service over livestock grazing regulations.
After his release from the Reno halfway house, which a federal prosecutor described as a "jail-like facility," Gardner will be subject to electronic monitoring during house arrest at his ranch in eastern Nevada.
U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben fined Gardner $1,000 last year for trespassing on Forest Service lands and noted Monday that he had shown some leniency by rejecting the Justice Department's request that the rancher be given a suspended jail sentence at that time.
"You nevertheless elected to violate the law again," McKibben said in issuing the new sentence Monday.
"It is without question and quite clear from the record that your actions were willful," he said, adding that Gardner has been "contemptuous of this court" in the process.
"Most, virtually all the ranchers in the district of Nevada are law-abiding," McKibben said. "They don't follow the law just as they see it; they follow the law."
More than 50 state's rights activists, ranchers and other critics of federal management of public lands rallied in front of the U.S. courthouse, then packed the courtroom to show their support.
About a dozen protesters on horseback carried Nevada state flags and waved signs that read, "Save the stockmen from BLM and Forest Service" and "Endangered Species: Ranchers on public land."
"Stand up against the tyranny of the government," shouted one protester dressed in a white wig as a patriot from the American Revolution.
Gardner maintains neither the Forest Service nor the federal court has the authority to prohibit grazing by ranchers whose families were on the land before the Humboldt National Forest was established in northeast Nevada in 1907. He argues his cattle must graze on the forage to reduce the threat of fires that nearly destroyed his ranch in recent years.
He said he would appeal the sentencing but intended to report April 3 to the Reno halfway house as ordered.
"All I have done is stand up for my rights," Gardner told McKibben.
"Over the past 10 years, the government has been successful in causing a great number of ranching families to abandon their (grazing) allotments, not only in Nevada but across the West," he said.
Gardner said later he probably would have to sell 200 to 300 head of his 500 cattle to pay the fine.
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If U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben is a card carrying enviral, this case should be thrown out of court.
No card carrying enviral fanatic posing as a judge should be allowed to be a judge on any case like this!
Fire in nature is an Act of God.
The fedgov has sovereign immunity.
What is important re this whacko Judge and other whacko Judges, are they current or past card carrying enviralists. I bet that many are on the boards of enviral organizations, contribute to the enviral organizations and support their enviral rural cleansing agendas on and off the bench.
We would not allow a former or current KKK Judge to sit on a trial of KKKer's. Allowing an eviral judge to sit on the bench to pass rural cleansing judgments on targets of rural cleansing is a mistrial!
I think that they should recuse themselves from any case where an enviral agenda is key to the case if they or their spouse are key envirals.
Should we be suing to dissolve the National Forests? - Is there another way?
Busting enviral judges couldn't be a bad start. ;^)
Give the government ownership and you'll see exactly the nonsense that's going on today. They're friggin loons.
Klamath fish, Idaho grizzleys, Pacific Coast Sand Flies, the government is totally out of control. If these laws were edicts of single individuals we'd say they were psychotic. Well, our government is psychotic.
I've seen this stuff so often and from so many directions, I'm courious if anyone here knows if it's true. The BAR is an English organization, lawyers accept the title of Esquire from England. I've read the contracts between Ben Franklin and England for money to keep our country running after the Revolution, and read other contracts from other countries that we had borrowed money from for the same reason, that the king of England bought up.
I've also noticed in some reading that America is refered to as an experiment and never escaped Englands rule.
Other reading says that "incorporation" goes back before 400BC in Greece and that Ceasar made good use of it as has England.
Incorporation simply means the State has control. The Christians that were persecuted in Rome by Ceasar, were not persecuted because of who they worshipped but because they refused to get a license from the State (incorporation)to worship Jesus. This may appear to be off subject but could possibly be on target to what we are facing in America's courts today. Most of our Churches have been incorporated since the 50's Incorporation .
Have we ever escaped Englands rule?
I look hard for the Truth and try to share it, maybe someone can help on this issue.
It does appear that as American's we are being tried in the wrong "court".
We should keep them at about the 1980 level. Many of the land grabs were unjust. I have nothing against raesonable grazing rights and reasonable forestry management. IOW Don't overgraze the leased land and don't come in and clear off whole mountain sides and leave them barren. The persons downstream do not appreciate the floods from it. Old usage agreements made for National Forest should be honored by the DOI.
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