Infamous Idaho Killer Claude Dallas to Be Released From Prison After Nearly Two Decades

ap.tbo.com ^ | :Feb 5, 2005 | John Miller

[okie01]

If this event happened "on the South Fork of the Owyhee" in Idaho, it is about as far from a town (or a road) as you can get in the lower 48.

South Fork, Owyhee River, Idaho

The South Fork of the Owyhee cuts across a corner of Idaho, between Oregon and Nevada. On my map, the nearest road is 30 miles away, the nearest town and the county seat (Murphy) is 50 miles away (as the crow flies).

Claude Dallas' camp was about as far into the sticks as one could get.

[MissAmericanPie]

Evidently the reputation of the "victim" proceeded him. He was a little Hitler obsessed with the power given him by the fed. We have all met one or two.

If a citizen decides to live off the land and in isolation no one has the right to interfere with his freedom to do so. Bobcats are not on any endangered species list, the Constitution guarantees a persons right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and to be safe in regards to his personal possessions. It was an un-Constitutional, therefore, an unlawful attempt at arrest.

Half the agencies in D.C. are unlawful and run counter to the Constitution. The congress shall make no law...and so on. Don't worry though, upon release some federal yahoo will hunt him down and shoot him for revenge.

[Osage Orange]

While I'm quite sure those type instances, like you have described, have happened. Although I think that your example is probably very rare. I'm obviously not familiar with the example you site either...but, waved in the wrong direction..a toy water pistol can get you killed. As you mentioned...I'm sure there's way more to the story than we are aware of it this junction.

FRegards,

[snarks_when_bored]

Evidently the reputation of the "victim" proceeded him. He was a little Hitler obsessed with the power given him by the fed. We have all met one or two.

To line Pogue up next to Hitler is repugnant and grossly disproportionate to truth. How many people had Pogue killed in the line of duty? Zero. Are you saying that Pogue's (alleged) heavy-handedness in game enforcement justified Dallas's putting a bullet in his brain? And what about Pogue's partner? What did he do to deserve his bullet in the brain?

Frankly, I'm not sure you're seeing things clearly here, nor am I confident that the jury did, either. But, still, that's our system and we abide by it.

As for your point about the arrest being unlawful, since when does somebody being arrested, lawfully or unlawfully, have the right to kill the arresting officers? In our day, the way to fight unlawful arrest is through the courts, not with guns. Are you suggesting that anybody who thinks that they don't deserve to be arrested should just start shooting? Jeez.

[MissAmericanPie]

Wake up, if someone tries to unlawfully arrest you, you have the right to use that force necessary to resist.
Didn't you learn anything from Waco and Ruby Ridge? Is it wise or the best course of action, no. But it is within the individuals right.

As for little hitler this wasn't his first run in with Dallas, he had been stalking and hounding him. It's not smart for a government employee to take things to a personal level. He becomes the gnat that needs swatting in the mind of someone like Dallas.

You and I would never be able to shoot anyone and would just take the jail time, but that is not what Dallas chose to do. He was use to his freedom, jail would be the last straw for him and he wasn't willing to give up a second of his freedom over some vindictive bureaucrat willing to ruin his life, so Dallas chose to react violently.

Many times a jury of your peers is smarter and more just than the law. I think they were more interested in sending a message to D.C. than punishing Dallas even though his punishment was a long stay in prison, and that message was, don't flaunt a mans rights with illegal legislation used to persecute him and drive him to a desperate choice to defend his rights and freedom. You may not like that personally, but there it is.

[snarks_when_bored]

Wake up, if someone tries to unlawfully arrest you, you have the right to use that force necessary to resist. Didn't you learn anything from Waco and Ruby Ridge? Is it wise or the best course of action, no. But it is within the individuals right.

Citizens of the U.S. have the right to use force to resist arrest? No, they don't. The arrestee doesn't get to decide whether his arrest is lawful or not; the courts do that.

Note, I said U.S. citizens. Dallas was (and is) a U.S. citizen. Had he renounced that citizenship and left the country, we wouldn't be having this discussion (although he'd probably be either dead or in prison in some other country, given his nature).

As for Waco and Ruby Ridge, we all know how well those turned out.

But you didn't address these questions: What did Pogue do to deserve a bullet in the brain? And what did Elms do to deserve a bullet in the brain? The answer in both cases is, nothing. Neither of those men were killers, so to even suggest that Dallas was justified in taking their lives is to forfeit all pretense of living under law. Perhaps you're comfortable with the idea of each person deciding at each moment of the day what law he's going to obey and what law he's not going to obey, but I'm not.

[SLB]

The two of you might want to read this:

Here is the link and I have copied most of the text below - http://quasar.as.utexas.edu/BillInfo/FIJA.History.html


History of Jury Nullification

---

WHY DID OUR FOUNDING FATHERS EXPECT CITIZEN JURIES TO JUDGE OUR LAWS AS WELL AS THE GUILT OF THE INDIVIDUAL ?
Because: "If a juror accepts as the law that which the judge states then that juror has accepted the exercise of absolute authority of a government employee and has surrendered a power and right that once was the citizen's safeguard of liberty." (1788) (2 Elliots Debates, 94, Bancroft, History of the Constitution, 267)

"Jury nullification of law", as it is sometimes called, is a traditional American right defended by the Founding Fathers. Those Patriots intended the jury serve as one of the tests a law must pass before it assumes enough popular authority to be enforced. Thus the Constitution provides five separate tribunals with veto power -- representatives, senate, executive, judges and jury -- that each enactment of law must pass before it gains the authority to punish those who choose to violate it. Thomas Jefferson said, "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."

The power of the jury to judge the justice of the law and to hold laws invalid by a finding of "not guilty" for any law a juror felt was unjust or oppressive dates back to the Magna Carta, in 1215. At the time King John could pass any laws any time he pleased. Judges and executive officers, appointed and removed at his whim, were no more than servants of the king. The oppression became so great that the nation rose against the ruler and the barons of England compelled their king to pledge that no freeman would be punished for a violation of any laws without the consent of his peers.

King John violently protested when the Magna Carta was shown to him, "and with a solemn oath protested, that he would never grant such liberties as would make himself a slave." Afterwards, fearing seizure of his castle and the loss of his throne, he granted the Magna Carta to the people, placing the liberties of the people in their own safekeeping. (Echard's History of England, p. 1067.)

The Magna Carta was a gift reluctantly bestowed upon his subjects by the Its sole means of enforcement, the jury, often met with hostility from the Crown. By 1664 English juries were routinely fined for acquitting a defendant. Such was the case in the 1670 political trial of William Penn for preaching Quakerism to an unlawful assembly. Four of the twelve jurors voted to acquit and continued to acquit even after being imprisoned and starved for four days. The jurors were fined and imprisoned until they paid the fines. One juror, Edward Bushell, refused to pay the fine and brought his case before the Court of Common Pleas. Chief Justice Vaughan held that jurors could not be punished for their verdicts. Bushell's Case (1670) was one of the most important developments in the common law history of the jury.

Jurors exercised their power of nullification in 18th century England in trials of defendants charged with sedition and in mitigating death penalty cases. In the American Colonies jurors refused to enforce forfeitures under the English Navigation Acts. The Colonial jurors' veto power prompted England to extend the jurisdiction of the non-jury admiralty courts in America beyond their ancient limits of sea-going vessels. Depriving "the defendant of the right to be tried by a jury which was almost certain not to convict him [became] ... the most effective, and therefore most disliked" of all the methods used to enforce the acts of trade. (Holdsworth, A History of English Law (1938) Xl, 110)

John Hancock, "the wealthy Massachusetts patriot and smuggler who as President of the Continental Congress affixed the familiar bold signature which adorns the parchment Declaration of Independence" (United States Court of Appeals, 1980, 618 F.2d 453), was prosecuted through this admiralty jurisdiction in 1768 for a fine of 9,000 pounds -- triple the value of the goods aboard his sloop "Liberty" which had been previously forfeited. John Adams eloquently argued the case, chastising Parliament for depriving Americans of their right to trial by jury. Adams later said of the juror, "it is not only his right, but his duty... to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court." (Yale Law Journal, 1964:173.)

Earlier in America jury nullification had decided the celebrated seditious libel trial of John Peter Zenger (Zenger's Case, 1735). His newspaper had criticized the royal governor of New York. The law made it a crime to publish any statement, true or false, criticizing public officials, laws or government. The jury was only to decide if the material in question had been published; the judge was to decide if the material was in violation of the statute. The defense asked the jury to make use of their own consciences and although the judge ruled that the truth was no defense, the jury acquitted Zenger. The jury's nullification in this case is praised in history textbooks as a hallmark of freedom of the press in the United States.

At the time of the American revolution, the jury was considered the judge of both law and fact. In a case involving the civil forfeiture of private property by the state of Georgia, first Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay, instructed jurors that the jury has "a right ... to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy." (Georgia vs. Brailsford, 1794:4.)

Until the middle of the 1800s federal and state judges often instructed juries they had the right to disregard the court's view of the law. (Barkan, Steven, Jury Nullification in Political Trials, citing 52 Harvard Law Review, 582-616) Then northern jurors refused to convict abolitionists who had violated the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. In response judges began questioning jurors to find out if they were prejudiced against the government, dismissing any who were. In 1852 Lysander Spooner, a Massachusetts lawyer and champion of individual liberties, complained, "that courts have repeatedly questioned jurors to ascertain whether they were prejudiced against the government ... [The reason] was, that 'the Fugitive Slave Law, so called', was so obnoxious to a large portion of the people, as to render a conviction under it hopeless, if the jurors were taken indiscriminately from among the people." Modern treatments of abolitionism praise these jury nullification verdicts for helping the anti-slavery cause -- rather than condemn them for undermining the rule of law and the uniformity of justice.

In 1895, the Supreme Court, under pressure from large corporations, ruled in a bitter split decision that courts no longer had to inform juries they could veto an unjust law. The giant corporations had lost numerous trials pressed against labor leaders trying to organize unions. Striking was against the law at that time. "Juries also ruled against corporations in damage suits and other cases, prompting influential members of the American Bar Association to fear that jurors were becoming too hostile to their clients and too sympathetic to the poor. As the American Law Review wrote in 1892, jurors had 'developed agrarian tendencies of an alarming character'." (Barkan, 1983, emphasis added.)

Despite the courts' refusal to inform jurors of their historical veto power, jury nullification in liquor law trials was a major contributing factor in ending alcohol prohibition. (Today in Kentucky jurors often refuse to convict under the marijuana prohibition laws.)

Fewer incidences of jury veto actions occurred as time increased after the courts began concealing jurors' rights from American citizens and falsely instructing them that they may consider only the facts as admitted by the court. Researchers in 1966 found that jury nullification occurred only 8.8 percent of the time between 1954 and 1958, and suggested that "one reason why the jury exercises its very real power [to nullify] so sparingly is because it is officially told it has none." (California's charge to the jury in criminal cases is typical: "It becomes my duty as judge to instruct you concerning the law applicable to this case, and it is your duty as jurors to follow the law as I shall state it to you ... You are to be governed solely by the evidence introduced in this trial and the law as stated to you by me.") Today no officer of the court is allowed to tell the jury of their veto power.

Counsels for Vietnam war protest defendants tried to introduce moral and political arguments on the war to gain jury sympathy. Most often the jury was given instructions such as "You must apply the law that I lay down." (Conspiracy trial of Benjamin Spock et al., 1969.) Jurors receiving such instructions usually convicted while feeling the pang of conscience expressed by the typical responses from Spock trial jurors: "I had great difficulty sleeping that night ... I detest the Vietnam war ... But it was so clearly put by the judge." And "I'm convinced the Vietnam war is no good. But we've got a Constitution to uphold ... Technically speaking, they were guilty according to the judge's charge." But in the few anti-Vietnam war trials where juries were allowed to hear of their power they acquitted.

Jury acquittals in the colonial, abolitionist and post-Civil War eras helped advance political activist causes and restrained government efforts at social control. Steven Barkan suggests that the refusal of judges during the Vietnam war to inform juries of their power to disregard the law frustrated the anti-war goals. As Lysander Spooner pointed out regarding the questioning of jurors to eliminate those who would bring in a verdict according to conscience (a practice effectively accomplished today through the jurors' oaths) "The only principal upon which these questions are asked, is this -- that no man shall be allowed to serve as juror unless he be ready to enforce any enactment of the government, however cruel or tyrannical it may be.... A jury like that is palpably nothing but a mere tool of oppression in the hands of the government."

Authoritarians may argue that the Constitution without jury veto power provides the necessary protection of liberties. But legislatures will always confirm the constitutionality of their own acts. And the oaths sworn to uphold the Constitution by judges and public servants have historically been only as good as the power to enforce such oaths. Nor are free elections adequate to prevent tyranny without jury veto power, because elections come only periodically and give no guarantee of repealing the damage done. Additionally, the second body of legislators are likely to be as bad as the first since they are exposed to the same temptations and use the same tactics to gain office.

Further, the jury's veto power protects minorities from "the body of the people, operating by the majority against the minority." (James Madison, June 8, 1789.) Twelve men taken randomly from the population will represent both friends and opponents of the party in power. With fully informed juries the government can exercise no powers over the people without the consent of the people. Trial by jury is trial by the people. When juries are not allowed to judge law it becomes trial by the government "In short, if the jury have no right to judge of the justice of a law of the government, they plainly can do nothing to protect the people against the oppressions of government; for there are no oppressions which the government may not authorize by law." (Spooner, 1852) (Excerpted from "Jury Power" by L.& J. Osburn)

[snarks_when_bored]

Interesting post. I find nothing in it that disagrees with the position I've taken regarding the Dallas case. I recognize that the jury ruled in his case, and, while I happen to disagree with the ruling based on my current view of the facts (as described in the article), I acknowledge the ruling.

I also find nothing in your post that bears on the question whether an individual citizen has a 'right' to use force to resist arrest if he decides that he doesn't want to be arrested. In fact, there is no such right under the law (which is the situation we're discussing).

[MissAmericanPie]

Yes, I know well that judges want the power to over rule a jury's decision. It's happening at an ever faster clip as the judicial tries to do away with juries.

The founding fathers made clear that unlawful legislation is to be resisted even to the point of violence, and that the individual should resist arrest.

It's amazing that so many people don't know their rights. I think the jury in this case were very keen individuals regarding just how far legislation is allowed to go. Both parties were punished in a fair manner.

Both globalists and liberals are busy dismantling or attempting to dismantle all our protections. From the electoral college to being tried by a jury of our peers, to the vagueness of hate crimes and hate speech to our sovereignty.

[SLB]

I was a jury foreman last fall on a fairly large civil case, 6 days of testimony. The judges instructions to us were nine written pages. When I handed the judge the findings he asked me if I was sure. I replied that I was and had signed the findings as the foreman. He didn't like it, as we found for the plaintiff, but did not award any money. That was not one of the specifics in the instructions, but was allowed under a general finding. It sure surprised everyone.

[snarks_when_bored]

So by your logic, police should be allowed to do whatever they please, subject to judicial overview?

No, and nothing I said implies that. What I said was that it is up to the courts (which include juries, of course) to decide whether an arrest is lawful or not. It is part of the law officer's job to arrest. It is not part of the citizen's job to refuse to be arrested. (And, before you hit the ceiling, read the next paragraph.)

Note that this entire discussion assumes as background the laws and legal environment of the United States. I'm not talking about living under a tyrannical regime or anything of that sort. And as for the view of the small number of people who think that America is a tyranny, no one's forcing them to stay here. By remaining in this country, a citizen cedes to the government a certain amount of his autonomy. The perennial question is always, how much individual autonomy will be retained and how much must be ceded to government for the sake of social order?

A classic discussion of this state of affairs is to be found in Plato's dialogue, Crito.

[MissAmericanPie]

That sounds like a very interesting case.

[Lloyd227]

"That came about when,at a jury trial I believe,it was determined he escaped to avoid being murdered by prison guards."

This is what I recall as well. While I am doing this from a distant memory and cannot produce references, my own recollection of the situation is that there was ample evidence that his fears were well justified and that those in a position to consider the evidence agreed with him. Hence, no extra time for the escape.

[Squantos]

This murdering trash had beter wear hunter orange 24/7 as accidents do happen........

[Jrabbit]

Definitely....and let this "hero" go live next door to one of the jurors.....

I've seen that some feel Pogue deserved to be killed....but what about the other guy?

[.38sw]

I remember the case. I was slightly acquainted with Pogue, had met him a time or two, but didn't know him well at all. What I remember about this case is that after Dallas shot the officers and finished them off with a round each to the head, he dumped Elms' body in the river because he was too large to pack out. He packed Pogue's body out and dumped him in the Nevada desert, where he was found a year later. There were a group of women that attended the trial every day, and were rooting for Dallas. They were known as "The Dallas Cheerleaders". They had a romantic notion of Dallas as an independent Mountain Man. Me, I just thought he was a murderer. It was that part about putting a bullet to the back of their heads that did it for me.

[em2vn]

Do you know why he has been serving his time in a Kansas prison? Was it a matter of his safety or just contracting out where space is available.

[Ghengis]

If a citizen decides to live off the land and in isolation no one has the right to interfere with his freedom to do so. Bobcats are not on any endangered species list...

Wasn't there a question as to whether the bobcats were even poached?

IIRC, Dallas' camp was on the Idaho/Nevada border. He claimed the cats were trapped in Nevada (in season). The Game Officer claimed that they were trapped in Idaho (a few days before season).

[Ghengis]

As for your point about the arrest being unlawful, since when does somebody being arrested, lawfully or unlawfully, have the right to kill the arresting officers? In our day, the way to fight unlawful arrest is through the courts, not with guns. Are you suggesting that anybody who thinks that they don't deserve to be arrested should just start shooting? Jeez.

I recall in both of my Ohio police academy classes that a citizen has the legal right to resist an illegal arrest. Of course, most courts do not recognize this right.