The Bundy brothers remained in jail Friday following a dramatic acquittal a day earlier in a courtroom that erupted into chaos after an attorney yelled at a judge for their release, resulting in him being subdued with a stun gun and arrested.
(FOX)- A jury delivered an extraordinary blow to the government Thursday in a long-running battle over the use of public lands when it acquitted all seven defendants involved in the armed occupation of a national wildlife refuge in rural southeastern Oregon.
After the verdicts were read, an attorney for group leader Ammon Bundy demanded his client be immediately released and repeatedly yelled at the judge. U.S. marshals tackled attorney Marcus Mumford to the ground, used a stun gun on him several times and arrested him.
U.S. District Judge Anna Brown said she could not release Bundy because he still faces charges in Nevada stemming from an armed standoff at his father Cliven Bundy’s ranch two years ago.
During trial, Bundy testified that the plan was to take ownership of the refuge by occupying it for a period of time and then turn it over to local officials to use as they saw fit.
Bundy also testified that the occupiers carried guns because they would have been arrested immediately otherwise and to protect themselves against possible government attack.
One of Ammon Bundy’s attorneys, Morgan Philpot, had a different perspective after watching Mumford get tackled by marshals. “His liberty was just assaulted by the very government that was supposed to protect it, by the very government that just prosecuted his client — unjustly as the jury found.”
There’s another Oregon trial coming up over the wildlife refuge.
Authorities had charged 26 occupiers with conspiracy. Eleven pleaded guilty, and another had the charge dropped. Seven defendants chose not to be tried at this time. Their trial is scheduled to begin Feb. 14.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.