Heir to Criminal Sheriff David Updyke: Ada County Sheriff Gary Raney. |
David Updyke, the first Sheriff of Idaho’s Ada County, used
his office to operate a criminal syndicate that robbed and terrorized people
under the color of “law.” Today, a very similar criminal practice is carried out
with federal assistance in the name of “civil asset forfeiture,” a procedure in
which police
confiscate money and property from people who haven’t been charged with
criminal offenses.
In his zeal to
protect his federal license to plunder, Gary Raney, Updyke’s most recent successor
as Ada County Sheriff, employed illegal means to stifle a proposed bill that
would protect Idaho residents against a prospective federal gun grab – and has
engaged in criminal retaliation against the sponsor of that bill, state
representative Mark Patterson.
Last January, when Barack Obama announced several anti-gun
executive orders, county sheriffs across the country publicly pledged not to
enforce any new federal anti-gun measures. Among them were nearly all of Idaho’s 44 county sheriffs. The
rank-and-file of the Idaho
Sheriffs’ Association (ISA) supported HB 219, a measure sponsored by
Rep. Patterson that would make it a misdemeanor for an Idaho law enforcement officer
to enforce new federal firearms restrictions.
Sheriff
Raney, who is
the president of the ISA, conspicuously disagreed with most of his colleagues.
“I have been asked many times in the past couple of weeks
whether I will uphold my oath to defend the Constitution and proclaim an
intolerance of federal action against the Second Amendment,” wrote Sheriff
Raney in a
January 25 op-ed column in the Idaho Statesman.
Acknowledging that the Constitution “includes the right to keep and bear arms,”
Raney pointed out that “it also includes the `supremacy clause’ that says that
every state shall abide by the laws passed by our Congress.”
What this means, from Raney’s perspective, is that if
Congress – or, presumably, the president – imposed a gun confiscation measure, he
would be duty-bound to enforce it, in the same way mid-19th Century
sheriffs and federal marshals were required to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.
Affecting a pose of dutiful melancholy, Raney insisted that
although he “personally” opposes “some of the gun control measures currently
under consideration, my oath requires me to uphold the laws that are passed by
our federal and state representatives.”
“Every Idaho sheriff opposes the proposed gun control laws,
but … we would simply have no enforcement role if they were to pass,” Raney
added in an separate interview. “Only federal law enforcement
agencies would be involved in such efforts.”
HB 219 would not have required sheriffs or other Idaho law
enforcement officers to defy federal
gun confiscation initiatives; instead, they would merely have been forbidden to
participate in them. That bill was vetted by the Idaho Attorney General’s
office, which found it to be compatible with both the state and federal
constitutions – including the much-heralded “supremacy clause.”
State Representative Judy Boyle, who was the point person on
all Second Amendment-related legislative initiatives, told Pro Libertate that HB
219 “was designed with input from sheriffs and the FOP [Fraternal Order of
Police] for two purposes. First, it would protect Idaho peace officers from
demands by the Feds that they carry out unconstitutional gun measures; police
officers and deputies would be able to point out that they couldn’t enforce
federal statutes because if they did they’d face misdemeanor charges. Secondly,
and perhaps more to the point, it would protect gun-owning citizens from those
same federal laws, and reassure the public that law enforcement agencies in
this state would not be collaborating with the Feds. So there were many active
members of the FOP and the Sheriffs Association in this state who supported the
measure.”
Since HB 219 would simply codify the arrangement described
by Sheriff Raney, it is difficult to explain why he organized a lobbying effort
that succeeded in pigeonholing the bill in the state Senate – assuming that he
was sincere in his public statements. According to Boyle, the focus of Raney’s
concern was the possibility that resistance to federal firearms measures would threaten
the all-important civil asset forfeiture program, which permits sheriffs to
confiscate money and property from people targeted in narcotics-related investigations.
“He told me, `Well, when there are drugs involved we get to
go after everything, and we get to keep the money,’ which isn’t exactly how
forfeiture works, according to the [drug enforcement] contract with the Feds,”
Boyle told Pro Libertate. “They do get to keep a share, but they don’t simply
get to keep everything. Besides, whatever you think of the forfeiture program,
there is nothing in HB219 that would threaten it.”
Raney repeatedly insisted on “amendments that would gut the
bill” in order to protect forfeiture programs, Boyle relates. When she refused
to cooperate, “Raney went ballistic and got [Canyon County Sheriff Kieran]
Donahue to help him lobby against HB 219.” Donahue, it should be noted, was among the
Idaho sheriffs who pledged to oppose new federal gun restrictions – while
publicly boasting about his efforts to cooperate with the ATF and other
federal agencies to “keep illegal guns … off the streets.” What this means, of
course, is that if the Feds designate ownership of certain firearms to be “illegal,”
Donahue would readily cooperate in efforts to confiscate them.
Raney and Donahue weren’t just pressuring legislators to
oppose HB 219 as bad policy, Rep. Boyle recalls: “They were also spreading
outright falsehoods about the bill.” In addition to claiming that it would “have
a huge negative financial impact on sheriff’s offices because of the loss of
forfeiture proceeds and funding for task forces,” Raney and his allies tailored
their campaign to fit the specific concerns of an individual legislator – State Senator Patti Anne Lodge, whose
husband is Federal District Judge Edward Lodge.
“They told Senator Lodge that she would no longer have
protection by the US Marshals Service if HB 219 was enacted,” Boyle relates. In
an effort to undermine support for the measure within the FOP, Raney’s clique claimed
that passage of the measure might threaten federal cooperation with a recently
created task force on internet crimes against children. This frantic lobbying campaign
provided an unwitting illustration of the extent to which “local” law
enforcement has been assimilated by the Feds through grants and other
subsidies.
Although HB 219 passed the House easily, it perished in the
Senate without being brought up for a vote.
In May, Rep. Patterson filed a complaint against ISA
lobbyist Mike Kane and the group’s executive director, Vaughn Killeen, who had
failed to disclose their lobbying efforts against HB 219. Following an inquiry by Idaho Secretary of
State Ben Ysursa, Kane grudgingly provided an amended lobbying report on May 15
– but in that document he didn’t mention his work on HB 219. After Patterson
submitted a second complaint, Kane was compelled to fill out a second amended
report and register as a lobbyist.
Six days later, Rep. Patterson sent a letter to Sheriff
Raney’s office requesting “the accounting records for the Idaho Sheriffs’
Association” dealing with expenses incurred by the organization’s lobbying
effort.
“Sheriff Raney and his lobbyist were working to defeat a
bill that had the support of most of their organization’s membership, and had
been found to be constitutional by the Attorney General’s office,” Patterson
explained to me in an interview. “It would be inappropriate, and perhaps
illegal, for taxpayer funds to be used to carry out lobbying activities of this
kind – especially in light of the fact that Kane and Killeen had been caught
violating the lobbying disclosure law.”
On the day after he sent that letter to the Ada County
Sheriff’s Office, Rep. Patterson received
a letter from Raney announcing that “we have initiated administrative
proceedings” to revoke Patterson’s Concealed Weapons License (CWL).
“We received information that you were charged with the
crime of forcible rape on May 15, 1974, in Hillsborough County, Florida,”
stated Raney’s letter to Rep. Patterson. “A search of court records in that
county confirmed this, as well as the fact that this charge resulted in your
entering a guilty plea to the crime of Assault with Intent to Commit Rape, on
July 11, 1974. The court records also show that you received a withheld
judgment in that case.”
Patterson – who maintains his innocence -- was never
convicted of rape, assault, or any other crime. On advice of his lawyer, he
accepted a withheld judgment and a five-year term of probation after spending
several weeks in jail, where he was brutally attacked at least twice and
constantly threatened with rape. Circuit Judge Harry
Lee Coe, who issued the withheld judgment, was (depending on one’s
perspective) either notorious or celebrated for his lack of leniency in dealing
with offenders.
Coe’s penchant for imposing maximum sentences earned him the sobriquet “Hangin’
Harry.” Nothing in his record or reputation suggests that the late Judge
Coe would go easy on a man accused of raping a troubled 46-year-old woman – if he
believed that the case had any merit.
“I was a twenty-one-year-old who was afraid of being raped
and killed behind bars,” Patterson told me. “I took the plea on the
understanding that a withheld judgment would give me the chance eventually to
clear my name.” A private investigator hired by Patterson’s father exhumed
evidence indicating that the accuser – who had demanded money from Patterson –
had lied to the police. This led Judge Coe to discharge Patterson from
probation “for his own best interest” on July 21, 1976 – three years early.
Florida
law specifies that a withheld judgment means that “the court declines to
convict (adjudicate guilty) the defendant…. If the defendant successfully
completes his probation, he is not a convicted person.” Likewise, under Idaho
law, according to the State Attorney General’s office, a withheld judgment “is
not a conviction under Idaho law… If a person receives a withheld judgment for
a felony, he may still obtain a license because no Idaho or federal law
disqualifies him from owning a firearm.”
When Patterson entered his guilty plea in 1974, his attorney
explained to him that once he completed his probation, there would be no record
of the charge: As a “legal nullity” that charge would never have existed as a
matter of law, and he would not have any legal duty to disclose it. (An
individual who “had the benefit of a withhold of conviction could traditionally
deny having a conviction, even when subject to deposition or while testifying
in court,” explains
the Florida Bar Association.)
Patterson received a CWL in 2007, and renewed it in 2012. On
both occasions he passed a background check by the Idaho State Police using the
FBI’s National Criminal Information Center database, which – unlike every
database accessible through a public records request – would contain
information about the withheld judgment in 1974. Patterson didn’t disclose the
now-expunged withheld judgment, because he wasn’t legally required to do so. In
keeping with the law, neither the Idaho State Police not the Ada County Sheriff’s
Office made an issue of that omission – until May 22, when it could be forged
into a weapon used to retaliate against Patterson for exposing Sheriff Raney’s
abuse of office.
An administrative hearing about Patterson’s CWL was held on
August 26. By law, the proceedings of that hearing, and all of the information
disclosed therein, is confidential. Patterson was assured that a decision would
be made within a week. However, that decision was delayed until October 29 –
and during that two-month interval, the legally protected information was
provided to Idaho Statesman reporter Dan Popkey.
Immediately after Patterson was informed by Raney’s office
that his CWL was being revoked, the representative received an email from
Popkey demanding an interview to discuss “a criminal matter in your past.” During
that meeting Popkey recounted conversations with Sheriff Raney regarding the
dismissed charges from nearly 40 years ago. Although Popkey refuses to divulge
his source for that material, it could only have come from either Sheriff Raney’s
office or the Idaho State Police – and, in either case, making it public was
against the law.
In
the subsequent hit piece published by the Statesman, Raney claimed that his
office reviewed Patterson’s background because of a “tip” received from a third
party about the long-buried – and legally non-existent – charges against him. He
also maintained that the record of the case (as well as a second case in 1977
that ended in an acquittal) was obtained through “a simple public records
request – the same type of request anyone in the community can file.”
This claim is almost certainly a lie.
“During my campaign back in 2012, the Statesman and the
Associated Press both did extensive public records requests on me, and they
didn’t find those records,” Patterson pointed out to me. “This information was
only available through the NCIC, and the only way Popkey could have gotten it
was through Sheriff Raney’s office.”
Popkey’s story also quotes Raney -- who has been in office since 2005 -- as claiming that the
decision to revoke Patterson’s CWL came as a result of “due diligence”
following the anonymous “tip.” However, Raney also admitted that he was “aware
of this charge in his history and therefore knew that in order to obtain [a
CWL] he must have falsified his application.” That would mean that Raney hadn’t done “due diligence” when he
approved Patterson’s applications in 20107 and 2012 – unless, as Patterson maintains, he was not legally required to disclose a
decades-old withheld judgment in that application. That omission only
became an issue after Patterson began
to investigate the possibility that Raney and his underlings at the ISA had
violated the law by lobbying against HB 219. Res ipsa loquitir.
Representative Patterson is not the only state legislator
facing retaliation from Sheriff Raney. On
November 12, Raney filed a spurious ethics complaint against both Patterson and
Representative Judy Boyle, the latter of whom discomfited Raney by refusing
amendments that would have eviscerated HB 219. Raney’s letter claims that Boyle
and Patterson improperly used “taxpayer-funded legal advice” to contest his
vindictive – and unwarranted – revocation of Patterson’s CWL.
“I sent a letter to the Attorney General’s office last
August 1 asking for clarification regarding a number of legal issues relative
to the concealed weapons law,” Rep. Boyle told Pro Libertate. “These are
questions that many of my constituents have asked, and as a legislator I’m
certainly entitled to ask the Attorney General about legal issues of this kind
any time I think it’s necessary.”
Raney insists that Boyle was acting solely on Patterson’s
behalf – without explaining his privileged insight into Boyle’s motives. If
that were the case, Boyle’s actions would be neither criminal nor unethical.
Raney rather inventively claims that this would be a criminal violation of the “Ethics
in Government Act.” He also insists that if Boyle “used deception” in obtaining
legal advice to which the entire public is entitled, she could face a charge of
“theft through diversion” – presumably, because the officials in the Attorney
General’s office are paid through tax funds.
Needless to say, Raney continues to deflect the question that
provoked his retaliatory onslaught: Did he and his colleagues illegally use
taxpayer funds to lobby against a gun rights law he opposed?
Unlike Gary Raney, Mark Patterson is not a full-time
tax-feeder. Patterson, a 61-year-old businessman with two young daughters,
operates a successful business and entered electoral politics out of
constitutionalist convictions. He is a product of that portion of the Tea Party
constituency that seeks to arrest the centralization of power and the militarization
of law enforcement – and to defend the individual right to armed self-defense
against those who seek to disarm the public.
Raney, by way of contrast, is a career law enforcement
officer who is an unabashed federal supremacist. His opposition to Patterson’s
bill was dictated by the necessity of placating the Federal officials who hold
his leash – and allow him to devour the property and money of people who have
not been convicted of a crime, as long as the Feds get their cut.
As Sheriff of Ada County, Gary Raney is living down to the
example of David Updyke, the criminal who was
the first to hold that office. Updyke
used that position to operate a stage coach robbery ring in exchange for a cut
of the plunder, an arrangement that differs not one whit – in a moral sense –
from the variant of highway robbery called “civil asset forfeiture.” He was removed
from office by the Ada County Commission following an 1865 stagecoach
robbery carried out by some of his “road agents” in Portneuf Canyon during
which five passengers were murdered and $86,000 in gold was stolen.
The following year, Updyke organized a state-licensed “militia”
to take part in a punitive campaign against a local Indian tribe. After the
crisis ended, Updyke cached the tax-purchased weapons and supplies to outfit
another “road agent” syndicate. One of Updyke’s former associates, testifying
in a civil trial against the former sheriff, revealed the rogue lawman’s plans
to reconstitute his criminal band. A loyal member of the cabal killed the
defector, prompting Updyke to flee the jurisdiction. He was tracked to a cabin
near Syrup Creek on the western slope of the Sawtooth Mountains by the Payette
Vigilantes, a private security organization led by future Idaho Governor
William J. McConnell.
Following a brief trial, Updyke and his associate Jake Dixon
were found guilty of numerous murders and forced to pay their debt to nature.
McConnell and his colleagues were not violent or lawless
men; they were private citizens driven to armed defense of their property
against a
state-licensed plunderbund led by the Ada County Sheriff. While not wishing
that any similar ill would befall Sheriff Raney, I would suggest that he could
profit from sober reflection upon the fate of his notorious predecessor.
(Please be aware that this is an evolving story -- and check here for future updates.)
Dum spiro, pugno!
13 comments:
Another article making my blood boil. At the start of every week, I try an internet search to follow up on various past events to see if there has been a reversal or any further action. This one is being added to the list.
Mr Grigg,
Please keep us informed if you hear of any appeals/reversals/etc in this case.
Couldn't you get this article somehow into the Idaho Statesman through any fairness rule or equal time allotment? Popkey is obviously a biased (and corrupt) individual and that makes the Statesmen a hostile reporting instrument for this case.
The Statesman only further erodes any good will I harbored for that rag. And it's a reflection of a corrupt "head" that the Sherrif's office and its "appendages" are equally corrupt. Explains a lot to me. So pathetic.
I have no doubt whatsoever that these two sheriffs are corrupt two-faced liars. I know for a fact that they are state paid federal employees and work with the feds to steal property from people for profit. Neither has any right to be in office in the State of Idaho as neither will EVER uphold the Idaho Constitution in any form. They have their own agendas and God help anyone who gets in their way. See: Sociopath.
Yet another example of the anti-American communists placed at the apex of the control hierarchy on every level. Everyone in this country are victims of a series of staged, wag-the-dog psyops designed to herd the citizenry into a deceptive and harmful reality.
Well you might like to know that like McConnell in this story, men and women in Ada and Canyon Counties have formed Constitution Militias. All meetings are public and all are welcome. You can find the units on Facebook as "Ada County 1st Battalion Light Foot Militia" and "Canyon County 27th Battalion Light Foot Militia". You can reach them respectively at IDCCG1A@cableone.net and IDCCG2C@cableone.net.
Sincerely,
Capt Campbell, CO
Ada County 1st BN
I wonder if the idiot Raney knows that the Supremacy Clause applies to enumerated powers only.
Uh, Nullifier, it appears he does not.
Raney is a communist. We had a conversation when this first came out. All 44 sheriffs in Idaho did not say they would stand up to the Feds! This is false! They sad they support the Second Amendment. However, they said they would do as court (Supreme Court)ruled. So if the courts ruled that gun control was Constitutional, our sheriffs would back that up!!! My partner and I put on the Second Amendment rally in Idaho Falls. I was also a Constitutional sheriff candidate in Bonneville County. I am very well versed in this subject. Do you research and don't believe things at face value! Most of our sheriffs play with words, but have never said they would stand up to the FEDS!!!! Sheriff Klinger of Madison County said he "MAY" do something if the Feds tried to confiscate firearms. If a man says he "may" or her "might" or "maybe" ...what do you think that means? It means he is weaseling his way out of making a real stand!
-Chad Christensen
Mr Grigg: FYI: This police abuse incident appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle this morning: http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/200-march-in-Mission-District-condemning-police-4995157.php
Best wishes -- and thank you for all your hard work.
Mark
Boise is a diseased town with progressive stooges, like Raney, running the state. Idaho is NOT a "red state". Meaning, it is not the place to move if one is looking to be more free from government intrusion. Sheriff Raney is a commie turd that needs to be flushed. When the SHTF, he will be one of the first to get it.
Somebody tell Raney when hammers go on sale at the big box stores... two for the price of one... the best way to beat himself about the head.
The supremacy clause is rather specific as to the fact that it only applies to those laws which are constitutional and within the framework of the powers granted to the Federal government under the Constitution. We would all do well to remember also t he 10th Amendment, which further clarifies the issue.
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