Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 27, 1995 TAG: 9504270043
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: VIRGINIA EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Six-week-old Jeb Stuart Stump was asleep when his father carefully lifted him out of his baby carrier in the spectators' gallery and toted him around a federal courtroom Wednesday as Exhibit A.
"This is what [an ATF agent] says I want killed," William Stump II yelled. "You think I want to see a baby pulled out of a bombed-out building?"
Stump was reacting to a comment last weekend by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agent Jim Silvey of Roanoke that Stump thought linked his Pulaski citizens militia to the group that may have caused the Oklahoma bombing.
"You've made your point," U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser said finally. "Give the baby back to his mother."
After hearing several motions from both sides - including a request for a mental evaluation of Stump and a demand that President Clinton appear in court - Kiser delayed for six to eight weeks what promises to be an unusual trial. He worried that an impartial jury would be hard to find in the wake of intense publicity about militia groups nationwide and the "present temperament of the nation."
Stump is accused of target practicing at a Blue Ridge Hunt Club meeting in Pulaski County last summer with homemade silencers the government says were unregistered and lacked serial numbers.
The hunt club was a militia group founded last summer to fight for gun rights and to defend citizens, members said.
Silvey said he never accused Stump of wanting to bomb a federal building. However, the Blue Ridge Hunt Club was the first militia to surface in Virginia and was preparing for armed conflict with the government if U.S. agents ever tried to disarm citizens.
The arrest warrant said that computer records found at club President James Roy Mullins' home said, "We want to do things that will incite the public into an uprising against the local, state and federal authorities. We will destroy targets such as telephone relay centers, bridges, fuel storage tanks, communication towers, radio stations, rail lines, airports, etc. ... human targets will be engaged."
The records also say the government would have to strike first before the militia took action. The club was quickly infiltrated by the ATF and five members were arrested on weapons charges.
Stump also is charged with conspiracy to violate firearms laws, a charge that Kiser worried would bring out information about the hunt club's paramilitary plans that could prejudice a jury.
"It's simply the guilt by association that worries me," Kiser said.
Neither side asked for a continuance because of the press coverage of the Oklahoma bombing, but Stump said he'd take a delay for any reason. He said he disagreed with the judge's ruling on finding 12 impartial people because "I have a lot more faith in the jury."
Leaning over to explain the postponement to his 4- and 6-year-old sons, Stump said, "So for at least three more weeks, Daddy won't be in jail."
The 35-year-old machinist is defending himself and wants to put the entire U.S. court system on trial as illegal according to his reading of the U.S. Constitution. To that end, Stump on Monday filed a document in the Pulaski County Courthouse - he recognizes state courts, but not federal ones - asking to bring President Clinton to Pulaski to answer for what the federal court is doing to Stump.
Clinton doesn't have to show up, Stump said. "I just want him to stop bothering me."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Don Wolthuis said Stump's request for Clinton's appearance "certainly heightens the government's concern of Stump's competence to stand trial and his competence to serve as his own counsel."
In a motion requesting a mental evaluation, Wolthuis said Stump has shown an "irrational and insistent refusal to recognize the issues which are relevant to his case."
"I'm perfectly competent to stand trial," Stump responded. "I understand this court is illegal, this proceeding is illegal; I understand Thomas Jefferson thinks this proceeding is illegal and I'll read his writings."
He then quoted Jefferson to the court.
"The only crime being committed is the one being committed right now in this court," Stump said.
Kiser ruled that Stump was competent.
"I don't think what I would characterize as his extreme views in any way lessens his ability to understand the proceedings any more than it does any other layman not trained in the law," the judge said.
The trial of two other militia members is scheduled to begin Monday, but could be continued.
Stump is being advised by Mike Tecton, a McLean man who said he's been writing on constitutional issues for 25 years. He and Stump are "strict constitutionalists" who believe that many powers Congress has assumed over the years rightfully belong to the states, and therefore many federal laws are illegal.
"We think a motion picture's going to be made out of this," Tecton said. "We have feelers out."
by CNB