FBI Agent Faces Trial in Killing at Ruby Ridge

SEATTLE —  An Idaho judge Wednesday ordered FBI sharpshooter Lon Horiuchi to stand trial in the killing of Vicki Weaver, the wife of white separatist Randy Weaver, in the 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge.

Magistrate Judge Quentin Hardin found that there was sufficient evidence to hold the FBI agent for trial on a charge of involuntary manslaughter stemming from the shooting of Vicki Weaver as she stood near the door of her rural Idaho cabin, holding her infant daughter.

Horiuchi is the first federal agent to face a criminal trial on charges stemming from the 11-day standoff, which also left Weaver’s 14-year-old son and a deputy U.S. marshal dead.

A federal judge in Boise, Idaho, has scheduled a hearing Monday on Horiuchi’s motion, joined by the U.S. Justice Department, to transfer the case to federal court. If granted, the move would cancel the upcoming trial in northern Idaho and allow Horiuchi to argue that he is immune from criminal prosecution because he was acting in his capacity as a federal law enforcement agent.

The state magistrate in Bonners Ferry, near the scene of the Ruby Ridge standoff, did not elaborate on his brief order scheduling a Feb. 13 arraignment for Horiuchi in state court.

But at the end of a daylong preliminary hearing last month, Hardin indicated that his decision would probably rest on whether Horiuchi fired at the Weaver cabin in a reckless, careless or negligent manner and, if so, how egregious such negligence would have to be to constitute manslaughter.

In a filing after the hearing, Boundary County prosecutor Denise Woodbury presented court transcripts indicating that Horiuchi must have known there were three adults and several children in the cabin when he fired at the door, allegedly aiming at Randy Weaver’s friend Kevin Harris, who was believed to have shot at a helicopter outside the dwelling.

In an earlier civil case, Horiuchi testified that Harris seemed to be holding the door open “or moving somebody out of the way, and that’s the time I shot.”

In her court filing, Woodbury argued: “To shoot without having identified the target clearly is criminal or gross negligence by the defendant’s own training. Taking all of the evidence as a whole, the defendant showed utter disregard for other human life.”

Horiuchi’s attorneys said he should not be held for trial when the state provided no evidence that he violated standards of care that might be expected in a high-risk law enforcement operation involving well-armed combatants holed up in a small cabin with children.

In any case, his defense is arguing that federal law allows agents such as Horiuchi to have charges against them heard in U.S. court when they concern acts performed as part of a federal law enforcement officer’s official duties.

Horiuchi maintains, his lawyers said in court papers, “that it reasonably appeared to him--at the time that he fired the shot that killed Vicki Weaver--that the action was necessary and proper to protect the lives of the law enforcement agents in the vicinity of the cabin.”

The outcome of Monday’s hearing could have important practical consequences, determining whether the case will be decided by a jury in rural northern Idaho, where sentiment against the federal government’s conduct of the 1992 siege still runs high, or in urban Boise, hundreds of miles to the south.

Los Angeles civil rights lawyer Stephen Yagman, who has been appointed a special prosecutor in the case, said the state would leave the issue of where the case is tried to U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge, the Boise jurist who has set Monday’s hearing.

“The appropriate function of a prosecutor is to inform the court of the law and the facts and leave it to the federal court to decide whether removal is appropriate,” Yagman said.

* RIORDAN TO TESTIFY: Special prosecutor in Weaver killing to grill mayor in LAPD case. B3