The first trial of three in the case against Cliven Bundy — a Nevada rancher who organized an armed standoff against the federal government — and his followers has been deemed a mistrial after the jury failed to reach consensus on all but two defendants after five days of deliberations. A new trial will begin on June 26.
“The desert standoff, 75 miles northeast of Las Vegas (in Bunkerville, Nevada), centered on Cliven Bundy’s illegal grazing of 1,000 cattle — but the trials symbolize much more than that,” says High Country News. “The standoff has come to represent the bitter, longstanding political battle in Western states over who should control public lands.”
The defendants in this particular case are “low-level,” with the event’s central organizers including Cliven Bundy and his sons Ryan and Ammon up for trial this summer.
Before the mistrial was announced, two defendants were convicted and their charges will hold. “[T]he jury released a verdict this morning for Todd Engel of Idaho and Gregory Burleson of Arizona,” says HCN. “The prosecution considered Engel a ‘gunman,’ who stayed on the roads above the sandy wash where protestors approached federal officers during the standoff … Burleson, who carried a long gun in the wash and told an undercover FBI agent that he went to Bunkerville to kill federal employees, was found guilty of eight charges out of ten — excluding conspiracy against the U.S. government and conspiracy to impede and injure a federal officer.”