In yesterday’s post, I talked about Roger Barnett, the Arizona rancher who had grown tired of illegal immigrants using his ranch as a highway to illegally enter this country. He was upset because they had done damage t0 his property, threatened his family, and killed his livestock. So, he started to catch them, and catch them he did. Mr Barnett caught over 12,000 illegal immigrants on his property in just 6 1/2 years.
A Tucson jury found that Mr Barnett didn’t violate the civil rights of criminals when he detained them at gunpoint. The federal jury also found Roger Barnett wasn’t liable on claims of battery and false imprisonment, but the jury did find him liable on four claims of assault and four claims of infliction of emotional distress.
The jurors ordered Barnett to pay nearly $78,000 in damages. The bulk of that, $60,000, is punitive. This means that the jury felt that Mr Barnett should be punished for defending himself and his property from people who had entered it illegally, intent on breaking the law.
Emotional distress- how is performing a citizen’s arrest of a criminal emotional distress? What about the distress of having your property destroyed, and being threatened by criminals breaking into your property?
Edited to add:
The Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) is one of the leaders in the anti-American movement. MALDEF is a supposed grass-roots organization that receives almost none of its money from the people it claims to support. In reality, they are funded by the Ford Foundation and take guidance from the National Lawyers Guild. Among other things, they promote free college tuition for illegal immigrants, the lowering of educational standards to accommodate Hispanics, refusal to defend American borders, and the right of criminals to vote in U.S. elections. This is all from an organizational that proudly proclaims itself “the premiere Latino civil rights organization in the United States.”