Ryan Bundy’s Brilliant Comments In Court
On November 13 and 14, 2017, I attended the Las Vegas court and witnessed the miraculous release of Ryan Bundy.
On Tuesday morning, November 14, Federal prosecutor Myhre, asked for a continuance based on the government request that they have more time to review some discovery involving emails. Judge Navarro asked the defense for their response to the government’s request. She polled each defense attorney and when she came to Ryan Bundy, representing himself, Ryan said to the effect,
“Your honor, I think it is ludicrous that defendants who have plead guilty through a plea deal are rewarded with freedom from pretrial detention, but if defendants maintain their innocence, they are punished with prison prior to any conviction. It is upside down. We are not presumed innocent, if we have to spend time in prison without any conviction. I oppose any continuance and I agree with the other attorneys that the remedy is a mistrial.”
No other attorney dared to bring up the “upside down” nature of the court’s position that, if a defendant could no longer stand the horrors of pretrial prison, they were rewarded with pretrial release by accepting a plea deal, while those who knew they were innocent and rejected the plea deal, had to suffer the agony of prison during the time it took to have a trial and complete the proceedings.
Ryan, now a “halfway house” man, with partial freedom, was speaking from a new vantage point. He no longer was barred from going out into the lobby or mingling with the court observers.
Many defendants would be cowed into thinking that they owed everything to the good graces of the judge, who had the power to free him or imprison him, at her whim. Ryan, however, did not fear the consequences of speaking boldly, but respectfully, of how awestruck he was by the bald faced injustice of the system.
It was a joy to see Ryan Bundy walking freely in and out of the courtroom. He asked me where the restroom was and I felt a surge of joy being able to tell him where the modern, clean, nicely appointed men’s room was. What a contrast to what he experienced in solitary with the squalid conditions of a toilet that didn’t work, and no toilet paper. What a contrast to the tiny window in his solitary cell door, where he received his meager rations and made calls on a telephone with a cord that was too short.
What a joy to see his wife Angie with their little daughter on the first floor, waiting to go to lunch with Ryan.
Ryan’s comments were brilliant because their simple “horse sense” logic put to shame the convoluted and tortured logic of a justice system and a federal judge who arrogantly claim that pre-trial prison is the rule, and that if you are given what is rightfully yours, a presumption of innocence and pre-conviction release, that you should be grateful to that system for an exception to the rule.
I like to compare it to a thief stealing your wallet, taking the cash and returning your credit cards and driver license, for which you should be grateful. That works in an upside down world, but in a world of common sense, the thief should have never taken your wallet to start with and the court should have never denied you bail nor denied pre-trial freedom to start with.
Yes Ryan, the reasoning of the court is upside down, where the common sense of the framers of our constitution has become the nonsense of Alice in Wonderland.
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