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Ruby Ridge,

I remember late one afternoon in the early 90's driving north on Route 93 from Boston being passed by a bunch of green cop cars exceeding the speed limit. Massachusetts cop cars are not green. These were Vermont State Police.

Later it dawned on me: Those Vermont boys were returning from the funeral of US Marshal William Francis Degan, of Quincy, Massachusetts, who'd been plugged in self-defense by one Kevin Harris:

David Nevin, a defense lawyer involved in the subsequent court case, noted later: “The U.S. marshals called in military aerial reconnaissance and had photos studied by the Defense Mapping Agency. . . . They had psychological profiles performed and installed $130,000 worth of solar-powered long-range spy cameras. They intercepted the Weavers’ mail. They even knew the menstrual cycle of Weaver’s teenage daughter, and planned an arrest scenario around it.”
On Aug. 21, 1992, six heavily armed, camouflaged U.S. marshals sneaked onto Mr. Weaver’s property. Three agents threw rocks to get the attention of Mr. Weaver’s dogs. As Mr. Weaver’s 14-year-old son, Sammy, and Kevin Harris, a 25- year-old family friend living in the cabin, ran to see what the dogs were barking at, U.S. marshals killed one of the dogs. Sammy Weaver fired his gun in the direction the shots had come from. Randy Weaver came out and hollered for his son to come back to the cabin. Sammy yelled, “I’m coming, Dad,” and was running back to the cabin when a federal marshal shot him in the back and killed him.
Kevin Harris responded to Sammy’s shooting by fatally shooting a U.S. marshal. Federal agents falsely testified in court that the U.S. marshal had been killed by the first shot of the exchange; evidence later showed that the marshal had fired seven shots before he was shot himself.
After the death of the U.S. marshal, the commander of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team was called in, and ordered federal agents to shoot any armed adult outside the Weaver cabin, regardless of whether that person was doing anything to threaten or menace federal agents. (Thanks to the surveillance, federal officials knew that the Weavers always carried guns when outside their cabin.)

From the Wikipedia:

[Randy] Weaver [the owner of Ruby Ridge] was charged with multiple crimes relating to the Ruby Ridge incident, a total of ten counts including the original firearms charges and murder. Attorney Gerry Spence handled Weaver's defense, and argued successfully that Weaver's actions were justifiable as self-defense. The judge dismissed two counts after hearing prosecution witness testimony. The jury acquitted Weaver of all remaining charges except two, one of which the judge set aside. Weaver was found guilty of one count, failure to appear, for which Weaver was fined $10,000 and sentenced to 18 months in prison. He was credited with time served plus an additional three months, and was then released. Kevin Harris was acquitted of all criminal charges.[21]
In August 1995, the US government avoided trial on a civil lawsuit filed by the Weavers, by awarding the three surviving daughters $1,000,000 each, and Randy Weaver $100,000 over the deaths of Sammy and Vicki Weaver. The attorney for Kevin Harris pressed Harris' civil suit for damages, although federal officials vowed they would never pay someone who had killed a U.S. Marshal (Harris had been acquitted by a jury trial on grounds of self-defense). In September 2000 after persistent appeals, Harris was awarded a $380,000 settlement from the government.[22]
Controversy over the Ruby Ridge Rules of Engagement led to a standardization of deadly force policy among federal law enforcement agencies, implemented in October 1995 after the Ruby Ridge hearings by the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Government Information, Senate Committee on the Judiciary.[23][24]