!!New Militia Sentencing-- Stewart!!

Good Evening Newsgroup Readers,

The Arizona Republic reports on the 24-year sentence handed down to
militiaman Robert Stewart. This criminal was something of a fixture on
the radical right and in the "patriot" movement [common law groups
included], and had a reputation of being able to supply anyone with
fully automatic weapons, no questions asked or paper work-- for a price,
of course. 

Now Stewart has a whole quarter-of-a-century to think on who badly he
has gone wrong!

Militiamen should heed his case!

Yours,

JP
Happy Harpy

+++++++++++++++++++

Dennis Wagner, `Ex-Teacher Gets Prison Term: 24 Years in Judge's Murder
Solicitation,` Arizona Republic, 031121.

At a federal court sentencing Thursday, 64-year-old Robert D. Stewart of
Mesa spoke reverently of the Bill of Rights, recited federal statutes
from memory and begged "for justice."

Then the constitutional scholar was sentenced to 24 years in prison for
soliciting the murder of a U.S. District Court judge who convicted him
previously on firearms charges.

"This is a man who was bent on bringing down the entire justice system,"
prosecutor Patrick Schneider declared before the sentence was announced.

Earlier this year, a jury found Stewart guilty of offering fellow inmate
August Weiss $100,000 in machine guns and cash for the political
assassination of Judge Rosyln Silver. 

The motive: Silver had presided over Stewart's 2002 conviction on
illegal weapons charges and had refused to accept his freeman-style
legal arguments.

Schneider said Stewart went into a "smoldering rage" over Silver's
rulings because he believes the federal government has no authority over
him. 

Once in prison, Stewart provided information designed to help a hit man
stalk the judge. 

Schneider said the assassin was supposed to "cut her head off and have
it hung from a pole," sparking a wave of copycat murders targeting court
officers who reject the hard-line militia theory of American law.

Stewart, a former history teacher, offered an impassioned defense,
reeling off reasons why he should not have been convicted and should not
spend the rest of his life behind bars.

First, Stewart told Judge Howard McKibben that the case against him was
"a setup" involving a jailhouse snitch who lied and a tape-recording
that was fabricated by federal agents. He said cover-ups in the bloody
law enforcement fiascoes at Waco and Ruby Ridge are proof that the FBI
falsifies evidence.

Next, Stewart claimed that the federal government has authority to
enforce only three criminal laws in the 50 states: treason,
counterfeiting and crimes committed on the high seas. 

Even if federal courts had authority to hear murder cases, he argued,
the prison he stayed in was Arizona territory, outside that
jurisdiction.

Finally, Stewart alleged that making and selling machine guns is a
Second Amendment right and his convictions in the past were all
"anti-constitutional." 

After McKibben rejected those arguments, and others, Stewart observed
that judges are "not immune."

"Is this a court of law, your honor?" he asked. "I'm not begging for
mercy. I'm begging for justice.

"The good Lord knows the purpose of all this. He knows the truth of
everything."

Stewart was sentenced to 232 months in prison for soliciting violence,
plus 60 months for lying to FBI agents.

The combined 24-plus years will run consecutively with a five-year term
he is serving for illegal gun possession. 

Besides the Arizona cases, Stewart also had a 1997 machine-gun
conviction in Utah.