The open letter to the public detailing the injustices of the Hammond family follows:
Re: Hammond Family Declared as Terrorist and Sentenced to Five Years in Federal Prison
From: The Bundy Family
Bunkerville, Nevada
To: Aware Citizens & Government Officials
Our hearts and prayers go out to the Hammond family with deep empathy. The magnitude of the injustices dealt to them is hard to comprehend. Their once happy lives have been forever darkened with pains of corruptions. The nature of their sentencing proves once again that justice is currently not found in the federal courts. The Hammonds are a simple ranching family that for generations has cared for the land they live upon. Prescribed burns are a vital process in keeping the land healthy and productive in the area. The BLM also performs prescribed burns and have let it get out of control many times, but never has it cost any federal agent hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and years of life in prison. The Hammonds prescribed a fire that moved to public land, they extinguished the fire themselves. The courts found that the burn increased vegetation for the following years, and had a positive impact on the land. With no authority or justification to prosecute, eleven years after the fire, federal attorneys have obtained judgment that the Hammonds are terrorists and must be punished severely for their actions.
The illegal predatory actions of federal agencies placing themselves as the sole beneficiaries of the land and resources must end or the people will stand in open resistance against it. The collaboration between federal agencies and the federal courts is shameful and will continue to accelerate the peoples demand for justice. The Hammond prosecution, and many offenses like it, solidify that the federal government is no longer an entity that functions for the benefit of the people.
This sort of federal harassment over private land is but another example of the overreach of the government into the lives of everyday Americans. This injustice must be stopped, as protection of private property is perhaps one of the most important rights Americans have to shield themselves from the government.
Source: Bundy Ranch
You can get on an action list to help this family HERE
You can make a donation to help this family in their battle HERE
More on their case:
The latest scene involved two ranchers being sentenced to five years in federal prison for inadvertantly burning about 140 acres of BLM rangeland in two separate fires, years ago. That is an area big enough to feed about three cow-calf pairs for a year in that neck of the woods.
Dwight, 73 and son Steven, 46, admitted in a 2012 court case, to lighting two different fires. Both fires started on Hammonds’ private property.
The Harney County ranchers are paying the BLM $400,000 in a separate settlement.
“The story is like an onion, you just keep peeling back the layers,”
“The jury convicted both of the Hammonds of using fire to destroy federal property for a 2001 arson known as the Hardie-Hammond Fire, located in the Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Area,” said the Department of Justice news release.
“The Jury also convicted Steven Hammond of using fire to destroy federal property regarding a 2006 arson known as the Krumbo Butte Fire located in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and Steen Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Area. An August lightening storm started numerous fires and a burn ban was in effect while BLM firefighters fought those fires. Despite the ban, without permission or notification to BLM, Steven Hammond started several “back fires” in an attempt to save the ranch’s winter feed. The fires burned onto public land and were seen by the BLM firefighters camped nearby. The firefighters took steps to ensure their safety and reported the arsons,” continued the DOJ release.
The two men were sentenced to prison in 2012. Steve served eleven months and Dwight three.
The men were charged with nine counts, including conspiracy, using aerial surveillance of sites they burned, attempting to destroy vehicles and other property with fire, and more. Dwight and Steve were found guilty of two counts – the two fires they readily admitted to starting on their own property.
In order to draw the original court case to a close, the two men, in a plea deal, agreed that they would not appeal the 2012 sentence.
The Department of Justice news release said arson on federal land carries a five-year mandatory minimum sentence. Judge Michael Hogan, however, did not give the two men the minimum sentence called for under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, saying it would have been “grossly disproportionate” to the crime. He added that a longer sentence would not meet any idea he has of justice and that he didn’t even believe congress intended that act to be applied in cases like the Hammond one. A longer sentence than the few months he gave them would “shock his conscience” he said.
The Department of Justice appealed for a full sentence.
Source: TheFencePost
This is a travesty Feds breaking the law…. Again!!!!
People fled England’s tyranny to come to this country to be free. We are now under tyranny yet again. We who know freedom, always speak up for the Constitution and Bill of Rights that what made this country great, and the men and women who have fought to preserve that freedom are tired of the tyranny.
We have a EVIL government that is not right
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.
That sounds about like our government, we need to tear it all down.
larry Nice Comment……could you send me a friend request because i want to have a lot of friend here am new on facebook site just friend nothing personal.
WELL NOW THE GOVERNMENT WILL GET WHAT THEY WANTED IN THE FIRST PLACE!!! THEIR LAND AND CATTLE!!!
Meanwhile Obama frees terrorists from American prisons, opens the borders for drug cartels and Syrian rebels who have connections with AL Qaeda, and arms houses and feeds these actual terrorists using our tax dollars while punishing us for not having health insurance. And nobody, even, cares.
they are not terrorist the one in the white house is the terrorist