The near-total exoneration of Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris was the latest example of the disdain shown by Idaho juries toward government efforts to tell them how to live their lives and mind their morals.
In what many saw as a reaction to overzealous federal law enforcement, the jury acquitted Weaver, 45, and Harris, 25, of murder, conspiracy and other charges Thursday and convicted Weaver only of two lesser offenses.That was despite a long, expensive campaign by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the U.S. Marshals Service, the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office to go after Weaver.
"It's government by fear and intimidation, and that's very repulsive," Sam Eismann, a Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, lawyer, said.
Eismann wasn't involved in the Weaver case, but he recently won acquittal for a former northern Idaho sheriff, Frank Crnkovich, on gambling-related corruption charges. They resulted from a massive FBI investigation that enraged many residents of Shoshone County, a historically lusty mining region long tolerant of gambling and prostitution.
Eismann told jurors in that trial that the government was using Crnkovich as a scapegoat to justify its 18-month vice probe.
The jury's exoneration of Crnkovich last March followed another federal court jury's acquittal in 1992 of another sheriff, Randy Baldwin of rural Idaho County, on burglary, conspiracy, grand theft and drug charges.
Weaver, 45, was a white separatist living with his wife and four children in a remote cabin in northern Idaho. Harris, 25, was a member of the household. Federal authorities charged that the two defendants and members of Weaver's family were motivated by their bizarre religious views to conspire for nine years to provoke a violent confrontation with federal authorities.
Despite its complexity, jurors said they spent only two or three hours - out of 20 days of deliberations - discussing the conspiracy count before acquitting both men of that charge.
Some of the jurors said afterward that they were disturbed by the seeming paranoia of federal law enforcement authorities toward people who hold strange views and lead unorthodox lives, and by the sheer numbers of federal agents and resources devoted to apprehending Weaver.
Howard Manweiler, a veteran criminal lawyer in Boise, said overwhelming numbers of federal agents in a case can work against a prosecution.
"They have the burden of proof," Manweiler said.