The Hammonds

The Hammonds

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Think the law’s always on your side? Listen to this story told by Ann Marie Moss, Communications Dir. for the Oregon Farm Bureau about The Hammond’s, a ranching family that made a mistake. “The Hammond’s own ranch land and twice they started preventative backfires to protect their own land and to protect their crops and that inadvertently spread to some BLM land. The BLM took them to court over these fires and the two ranchers have fully cooperated with the case, admitted culpability and they were sentenced to jail time, paid a fine and lost grazing permits. The backdrop of all this is that they were being tried under the antiterrorism and effective death penalty act of 1996. Our stance is that ranchers who set backfires to protect their crops and land is not what that law was intended to do. The ranchers should not be tried as terrorists.”

 

Today a judge determines whether to make them serve their full 5 year sentence for burning a total of only 140 acres of BLM land.

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