Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 25, 1995 TAG: 9504250061
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A Pulaski County militia member who goes on trial Wednesday in Roanoke federal court said he thinks it will be impossible to get a fair trial on firearms charges.
William Stump II, a self-described constitutionalist facing trial for activities as part of the Blue Ridge Hunt Club, said comments in the press about the Pulaski citizens militia in the wake of last week's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City could prejudice the public.
``I guess it's going to be a crime now to talk about the Constitution and our forefathers,'' Stump said Monday.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Don Wolthuis said he doesn't think finding an impartial jury will be a problem, despite the reported possible link between a Michigan militia and the Oklahoma bombing.
``What he's charged with is specific gun violations,'' Wolthuis said. ``I'm confident a jury can tell the difference.''
The Blue Ridge Hunt Club was founded last summer as a militia to fight gun-control laws and to take up arms if government agents ever try to attack citizens. As do other militias around the country, the Pulaski group feared that the government could someday turn on citizens.
Two watchdog groups - Klanwatch and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith - say the Blue Ridge Hunt Club is the only militia they've identified in Virginia.
The hunt club met just three times last summer before federal agents arrested five members on firearms charges. The club's vice president, Raeford Nelson Thompson, was an informant for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. He wore a secret microphone for the agency to the meetings.
Stump is charged with conspiracy to violate federal firearms laws and with possession of unregistered silencers and silencers without serial numbers.
He maintains that the club members focused on effecting political change. As a side activity, they target-practiced; Stump said he didn't know that the guns, which someone else owned, were unregistered.
Two other club members go on trial Monday; Stump's trial was split off because he will defend himself.
The club president, James Roy Mullins, has pleaded guilty to charges against him and awaits sentencing. Agents found documents belonging to Mullins that advocated guerrilla warfare, theft of government weapons and assassination. Mullins acknowledged possession of the documents, but he said such tactics would have been used only if the government struck first.
Stump has refused the help of an attorney because he believes lawyers are part of the corrupt system. He also refuses to address the charges against him, considering them secondary to his mission - to convince a jury that the federal courts have no standing in the commonwealth of Virginia.
Stump said he refused on principle a plea bargain that would have meant no jail time. Wolthuis won't discuss whether he offered Stump a plea bargain.
In 1763, Patrick Henry was allowed to argue the merits of the law before a jury, so Stump should enjoy the same opportunity, he told U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser at a recent pretrial hearing.
``He had the freedom to do that when he was under the rule of the [English] crown,'' Stump told the court, almost shouting at times. ``Did the Founding Fathers fight so we could have less freedoms than under King George? If I can't say what I want to the jury to save my life, then I have no freedom of speech. Anything I could say out on the street is nothing compared to what I would say to that jury.''
The judge was unmoved.
``If you think you're going before the jury and arguing the history of the Constitution, let me disabuse you of that notion,'' Kiser said. ``I would encourage you again to accept the offer of an attorney. Apparently, you won't. The rules are still the rules and you'll have to follow them.''
Stump, as do militia members around the country, speaks of the 1993 ATF raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, as the catalyst that prompted his activism in the Blue Ridge Hunt Club.
He told Kiser that he was pulled in to the club by Thompson - an ``agent provocateur'' of the ATF.
``I was vulnerable to what he had to say because we all saw the killings at Waco and we're all terrified,'' Stump said.
Stump said he worries that the ATF could send someone into prison to kill him. If an ATF agent could hire a felon to buy a gun illegally from one of the club members and then arrest him, what's to stop the agent from killing? Stump asked.
``Is it reasonable for me to fear this man? If he and officers in his organization can burn up 85 people and not be brought to trial?'' he said. ``Ever since to this day, I've been terrified. How can this happen? And the United States did it.''
The U.S. government makes mistakes, Kiser said, and Waco ``was obviously one of those mistakes.''
Waco remains a source of anger for militia members: Two years later, it continues to be a rallying point for many.
Other government actions that militia members see as eroding personal freedoms - from motorcycle helmet laws to the ban on assault weapons - also mobilize them.
Such militias often are dismissed as extreme or radical. But, an analyst at Political Research Associates notes, the movements ``reflect deep divisions and grievances in society that remain unresolved.''
Joining such groups, Chip Berlet wrote in a February essay published by the Massachusetts think tank, is ``an act of desperation; grasping at straws to defend their economic and social status - in essence protecting hearth and home and their way of life against the furious winds of economic and social change.''
by CNB