One reason it worked was that most of the defendants weren't even in the courtroom. U.S. District Judge John Coughenour ordered Jon Barry Nelson, Steven Hance and his two sons James and John removed after they tore up their court name tags and claimed the court had "no jurisdiction" over them. In the end, they were convicted of a variety of crimes: Armed robbery, possession of firearms and IRS fraud. Only Edwin Clark, described by his own attorney as the naive and ignorant man whose foreclosed farm became the Freemen's heavily armed "Justus Township" compound, walked free -- and into the record books as the first man to face no penalty for writing a $100 million check that bounced.
'Freemen' Lose Freedom
-
Share
-
Read Later
-
BILLINGS, Mont.: Luckily for the FBI, the Freemen standoff was no Waco.
Similarly, it took nothing like the Oklahoma bombing trial to convict five out of six members of the Montana antigovernment group. The jury took but a single day to decide, and announced its
mostly guilty verdict Tuesday. "Our system of justice works," said a
relieved Justice Department spokesman.