Calling it a classic example of “buyer’s remorse,” a federal judge Wednesday denied Oregon standoff defendant Ryan Payne’s motion to withdraw his guilty plea to a conspiracy charge stemming from the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown, in a 32-page ruling, found that Payne’s guilty plea in the Oregon refuge occupation case was not contingent on a plea agreement reached in his federal prosecution in Nevada, as his defense lawyer had argued.
“Although Payne apparently desired to enter into agreements that would resolve both this case and the case against him in the District of Nevada, the plea agreement and guilty plea in this case were, as noted, explicitly independent of any contemplated or anticipated agreement in the District of Nevada,” Brown wrote, citing statements by a prosecutor made during Payne’s plea hearing before her in July.
Payne entered the plea in the Oregon case in July based on a global offer pending in the Nevada case, his lawyer wrote in his motion. When an agreement in the Nevada case wasn’t reached, Payne, 33, asked to withdraw the plea and seek a jury trial in Oregon, his assistant federal public defender, Rich Federico, wrote.
Payne, one of the 26 people indicted on a conspiracy charge in the seizure of the eastern Oregon wildlife refuge, sought to withdraw his guilty plea two weeks before a federal jury acquitted Ammon Bundy and six co-defendants of the Malheur conspiracy and weapons charges.
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