Author Archive: Doug Knowles

The juror seems very highly prejudiced against firearms. A mistrial should have been declared.

The Bunkerville Retrial is on Day 23, with three full days of jury deliberations being completed. Today brought the principals together when two jury questions were presented to the court.

The questions centered around one, or more, juror’s beliefs that two other jurors could not be unbiased. The two questionable jurors were identified by numbers, 6 & 9.

Judge Gloria Navarro did not read the questions aloud, presumably to keep the public from hearing the exact wording, as the attorneys had already been given copies of the questions.

Those who have been watching the court rulings in the Bunkerville (“Bundy”) retrial have been scratching their heads at some of the rulings of Judge Gloria Navarro in the case.  The Judge appears to consider any evidence of guilt to be relevant while considering any mitigating evidence or evidence of circumstances to be irrelevant. 

Examples of this ‘rule’ in play are numerous.  When a BLM agent named Alexandra Burke took the stand for the prosecution, she was allowed to sob wildly and say that she saw a man with a black hat with a white emblem [defendant Eric Parker] standing and pointing a rifle directly at her from over the concrete barrier of the northbound bridge of I-15.  No photos or video substantiate Burke’s claim, and most observers believe Burke was lying and probably following instructions to lie from prosecutors.   Dozens if not hundreds of sources were taking pictures and video of the area at the time, and there were Nevada Highway Patrolmen on that very bridge at the time (with two rolling dash-cams of the bridge).  The troopers who surely would have made an arrest if they saw or heard that Parker was shouldering and pointing his weapon directly at BLM agents to the left.

Andrea Parker was surrounded by friends and well-wishers outside the Federal Courthouse in Las Vegas today.

Waiting on a jury to decide her husband’s fate, she spent the day in handcuffs protesting the rulings of Judge Gloria Navarro.

The week brought a crowd of hundreds of people from around the country to rally and show their frustration at the Constitutional rights being denied to four men on trial this month.

Eric Parker was removed from the witness stand and his testimony stricken by Judge Navarro earlier this week. She denied him his right to testify in his own defense because she did not want the Federal law enforcement officers to look bad in front of the jury.

The jurors are now deliberating, having received the case on Tuesday.

The Bunkerville Retrial has gone to the jury to begin their deliberations.

The defense case has been wrought with drama. Judge Gloria Navarro began by forcing the defense witnesses to proffer, or preview, their testimony out of the jury’s hearing. After 4 witnesses testified via SKYPE last week, including a witness that previously was called by the prosecution, Navarro ruled that none of them could testify.

Navarro made the ruling based on her belief that the witnesses were only there to bolster a self-defense claim. She ruled previously that this was not a valid defense in this case.

The following day, Eric Parker attempted to testify in his own defense, as is his right to do. After a few questions, Navarro stopped him from testifying, had him removed from the witness stand, and had his testimony completely stricken from the official court record. She instructed the jury to disregard his testimony, as if he had never been on the witness stand.

Last week showed mayhem in the Judge Gloria Navarro’s courtroom in Las Vegas. The defense attempted to call defendant Eric Parker to the witness stand to testify in his own defense.

The prosecution showed their paranoia when they began their objections nearly immediately. Judge Navarro had laid out guidelines for Parker’s testimony that focused on not allowing the Federal agents to be placed in a bad light. She has insisted that there is no self-defense allowed when the ‘victim’ is a federal agent or law enforcement officer. She claims there is no evidence that these agents used excessive force on April 12, 2014.

However, though she has allowed these agents to cry on the witness stand to emphasize their fear of the protesters, she has put her iron fist down about the defendants doing the same. Navarro allowed the prosecution to object to Parker using the words “snipers” and the “First Amendment Zone”.

The bedrock of our judicial system is under attack in this Las Vegas Federal Courtroom.

During the first trial of the Bunkerville defendants, this past March, Judge Gloria Navarro made the specific point to Todd Engel that, in her courtroom, defendants have only three rights.

In happened after Engel, who was representing himself as was his right to do, asked the unforgivable question, “Is it true that [Special Agent In Charge] Dan Love is under criminal investigation?”

The prosecution threw fits, yelling objections. Navarro not only sustained their objections but stripped Engel of his right to self-representation. Navarro told Engel that he had lost his privilege to self-representation and was no longer allowed to talk in her courtroom.