Judge in Ammon Bundy case generous in delaying his trial to let him pick fruit | Opinion

Judge Nancy Baskin was more than generous in granting a request by far-right activist Ammon Bundy to delay his trial.

His excuse? He needed to pick apples and pears from his orchard.

“As an apple and pear producer, October is harvesting season and a crucial and busy time,” Bundy wrote in his motion to delay his trial. “Having (a) trial at the beginning of the harvest season would prove to be very difficult for both attending to the trial and to harvesting my crops. I cannot do both at the same time. ... The loss of the (apples) and the distraction in trial would not be fair to my family or I.”

Over the past year, Bundy has repeatedly ignored court dates, doxxed judges, encouraged his followers to show up at their houses, screamed at sheriff’s deputies who were simply doing their jobs by serving him court papers, and called court rulings tyrannical and unjust.

In fact, the whole reason he’s going on trial is to answer contempt of court charges. Bundy’s accused of intimidating and harassing witnesses in a defamation lawsuit filed against him by St. Luke’s in which Bundy and his co-provocateur Diego Rodriguez spread lies about St. Luke’s and its employees in the child welfare case of Rodriguez’s grandson.

Bundy and Rodriguez lost the case in a default judgment because they couldn’t even be bothered to show up for court hearings. They refused to participate, part of Bundy’s history of either ignoring or tormenting the legal system.

And now he wants a court to show him some mercy?

Granted, Bundy’s livelihood is his orchard of 360 trees, and he argues that if he’s not allowed to harvest his crop, it would hurt his ability to pay what he owes as part of the $52.5 million judgment against him in the defamation lawsuit.

Perhaps Bundy could put the call out to his People’s Rights Network followers — the ones who showed up at his Emmett ranch to defend him against police officers (so much for “back the blue”) when they thought Bundy was being arrested — and ask them to pick his apples and pears while he’s in court.

Since Bundy has shown so little regard for law enforcement and the judicial system in the past, we question whether the apple-picking excuse is simply another ruse to avoid a court date.

Baskin scheduled the new date for November. We hope Bundy won’t argue that he can’t make that date because he has to rake leaves. Because if there’s another delay, we’re into snow plowing season, then irrigation season, then pretty soon we’re back to harvest season again.

Where will it end?

We’re not faulting Baskin for being a fair and magnanimous judge. And her decision probably preempts any inevitable accusations and petty complaints from Bundy that the court system isn’t being fair to him.

But we’re not so sure we’d be able to show the same grace to a man who’s thumbed his nose at the justice system time and time again, treating it with nothing but disdain.

Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community members Mary Rohlfing and Patricia Nilsson.