Beale guilty, again

[Demosthenes]

Tax protester, cohorts guilty of interfering with judge
By JAMES WALSH, Star Tribune

October 27, 2008

The strange saga of Robert Beale didn't exactly end last month with his 11-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion. Another chapter concluded Monday when Beale and two other tax protesters were found guilty of conspiracy to impede an officer and obstruction of justice.
A federal jury convicted Beale, 65, Frederick Bond, 63, and John Pelton, 67, of trying to prevent U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery from presiding over a criminal trial -- namely, Beale's -- "by force, intimidation and threat." Another man, Norman Pool, pleaded guilty last month to one count of conspiracy to impede an officer.
Prosecutors said the four men held a "common law court" to issue false liens and fictitious arrest warrants against Montgomery.
They also planned to disrupt Beale's May trial in the belief that only Jesus has jurisdiction over people.
Pelton is the leader of the "common law court" that drafted the arrest warrants.
Beale instructed his co-conspirators to bring 30 to 40 people to his trial to disrupt it if Montgomery refused to dismiss the charges against him. But no more than a handful of observers ever attended the proceedings.
During an April 3 phone call to the group, he said: "God wants me to destroy the judge. That judge is evil. He wants me to get rid of her."
During a second conversation, Beale said: "God wants me to take the judge out, that's what he wants me to do."
Later in April, Bond showed up at the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office with a subpoena addressed to Montgomery, commanding that she appear before the common law court at its April 15 meeting in Little Canada. A few days later, Beale called Bond and told him that he wanted Montgomery "to be intimidated."
The trial went on as planned, and a jury found him guilty after deliberating for less than two hours in May.
On Sept. 11, Montgomery sentenced a sometimes-contrite, often-defiant Beale to 11 years and two months in prison for hiding more than $5 million in income and owing the state and federal governments more then $4 million in unpaid taxes, fees and penalties. His trial was initially scheduled for August 2006, but he fled Minnesota and spent 14 months as a fugitive before his arrest Nov. 1 in Orlando, Fla.
The jury on Monday found Beale and his two co-conspirators guilty after seven hours of deliberation. Each of the four men involved in the case face a maximum penalty of six years in prison on the conspiracy to impede count. The men face 10 years in prison for the obstruction of justice count.
U.S. District Judge Rodney Webb, from the District of North Dakota, presided over the trial because the charges involved a sitting Minnesota judge. Webb will sentence the men at a later date.

[Imalawman]

Break em' and break em' hard judge. We can probably scrounge up a cattle prod for you as well.