Remember the "Farm Crisis"?
(Page 7 of 8)
November/December 1996
By Joel Dyer, Boulder Weekly (www.boulderweekly.com)
Ironically, arresting those involved in this mainstream common law court revolution isn't easy. It's not because they can't be found; it's because they may not be doing anything illegal. The Oklahoma attorney general's office, for example, has spent considerable time and effort investigating whether common-law court organizers have broken any laws.
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The debate about whether or not citizens have a constitutional right to convene grand juries and hold public trials--only one of the fascinating legal issues being raised by these trends--will eventually be resolved. But there is a darker side to this vigilante court system: It doles out death sentences in its quest to deliver justice and create a new and "holy" government.
In his book Gathering Storm (HarperCollins, 1996), Morris Dees describes Identity this way: "There is nothing 'goody, goody' or 'tender' about Identiy. It is a religion, a form of Christianity, that few churchgoers would recognize as that of Jesus, son of a loving God. It is a religion whose god commands the death of race traitors, homosexuals, and other so-called children of Satan."
It is for this reason that the common law courts convened by groups influenced by the Identity belief system are by far the most dangerous. Death sentences can be handed down for almost any conceivable transgression.
In the remote western Oklahoma farmhouse, the Freeman/Identity farmers I met discussed the Justice movement. One man who recently lost his farm to foreclosure explains their court system: "What you're seeing right now is just the beginning of taking back our country, the true Israel. The Bible says that we're to be a just people. Where is justice in this country? Our judges turn loose rapists and murderers and put farmers in jail. We're about justice. Why would anyone be afraid of that?"
"We're holding courts right now in every part of this land. We're finding people guilty and we're keeping records so we can carry out the sentences. It's the citizen's duty and right to hold common law courts. It's the militia's job to carry out the sentences."
The farmer went on to explain that Identity doesn't believe in prisons. Nearly all serious offenses are dealt with by capital punishment in a system based on the Bible, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, and the Magna Carta. Asked how death sentences would be carried out, he said, "There's a part of the militia that's getting ready to start working on that. I think they're ready to go now. You'll start seeing it soon."
Perhaps we already have. Was the Oklahoma City bombing onlyl the largest and most recent example? When they are asked, the men in the room say emphatically that they have no firsthand knowledge of the bombing--even though some of them were questioned by the FBI within days of the deadly explosion. They say they don't condone it because so many innocent people died, but they agree that it may well have been the result of a secret court sentence. The court could have found the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms guilty for any number of actions--including the Branch Davidian fiasco in Waco and the Ruby Ridge killings--and Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the suspects charged with the bombing, may have been militia foot soldiers simply following orders to carry out the sentence.
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