Idaho Separatist Sentenced to 18 Months

A white separatist acquitted in July of murdering a U.S. marshal during an Idaho shootout was sentenced Monday to 18 months in prison and fined $10,000 for failing to appear on a federal weapons charge in 1991.

Randall Weaver, 45, whose wife and son also died in the August, 1992, gunfight, was allowed to briefly see and hug his two adolescent daughters and his 84-year-old father in the courtroom before being led away.

Judge Edward J. Lodge also placed Weaver on three years’ probation.

Gerry Spence, Weaver’s chief counsel, said his client’s 14 months already served, along with good behavior, would likely have him out of prison by the end of the year.

The sentencing ends a trial which attracted national attention for its window into the methods of federal law enforcement agencies in their attempts to curtail an extremist group they perceive to be dangerously armed.

A jury last July found Weaver and co-defendant Kevin Harris, 25, who lived with the Weavers, not guilty of an array of murder, conspiracy and other charges brought by federal prosecutors stemming from the gun battle.

Camouflaged and armed with high-powered rifles, Deputy U.S. Marshal William Degan, 42, and two other marshals had been spying on Weaver’s remote mountain property in northern Idaho while trying to bring him in to face a charge of illegally selling two sawed-off shotguns.

A gun battle erupted in which Weaver’s son, Sammy, 14, was killed with a shot in the back, and Degan was also killed. Jurors decided that Harris, who shot Degan, acted in self-defense after the marshals opened fire.

The following day, an FBI sniper shot and killed Weaver’s wife, Vicki, 43, as she stood in the cabin doorway holding her baby daughter. Weaver, Harris and Weaver’s three daughters holed up in the house for 10 more days before surrendering to authorities.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Ronald Howen argued Monday for a maximum sentence of three years, saying Weaver’s failure to appear on the weapons charge was deliberate and ultimately “cost several lives including those closest to himself.”

But Weaver has claimed that undercover agents for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had entrapped him into selling the altered weapons in the first place.

Spence angrily attacked the ATF in Monday’s hearing, charging that the chain of events “started when they infected his (Weaver’s) life. It started with the government itself, when they took a man who never committed a crime and decided to make a criminal out of him.”

Weaver is an adherent of the Christian Identity Movement, which blends Old Testament beliefs with a fervent devotion to racial separation.

On instructions from U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, the Justice Department is preparing an internal investigative report on the FBI’s role in the Weaver case. A department spokesman said a final version is “weeks away.”