Charles Dyer, a former Marine with ties to the antigovernment Oath Keepers, was sentenced to 30 years in prison Tuesday for raping his daughter when she was 6, the Stephens County District Attorney’s office in Oklahoma said.

The sentencing was the final chapter in a case that sparked national attention after Dyer failed to appear for trial last summer and soon afterward issued threatening, conspiracy-theorizing communiqués that left no room to doubt his intentions if police were to catch him. ( continue to full post… )

In the end, the antigovernment rhetoric that so energized his defense couldn’t save Charles Dyer, the former Marine and member of the antigovernment Oath Keepers organization accused of raping his own 6-year-old daughter. Late Thursday, after four hours of deliberation, a Duncan, Okla., jury convicted Dyer and recommended a 30-year sentence.

After the verdict was read, Dyer’s hands and feet were bound in chains. His face hardened and he did not mutter a word. The only claims of innocence had come earlier as he testified. “I believe in my heart that my daughter is a victim of sexual abuse. … [But] I’ve never hurt anyone in my life, especially not my daughter,” Dyer said.

The case drew national attention after Dyer failed to appear in court for trial in 2010. (At the time of his arrest, he was also charged with possessing a grenade launcher stolen from the military in 2006; he was later acquitted of that charge.) Dyer became infamous when he went on the lam and began issuing threatening, conspiracy-laced communiqués that left no room for doubt as to his violent intentions were police to catch up with him. ( continue to full post… )

DUNCAN, Okla. — The second trial of self-described Oath Keeper Charles Dyer, who is accused of raping his 7-year-old daughter in 2010, came to an abrupt end on Tuesday when a judge declared a mistrial after discovering the district attorney’s office had improper conduct with jurors.

District Attorney James Walters had not yet finished examining his first witness, Dyer’s wife Valerie, when the court learned that three jurors in had received a follow-up questionnaire for their service in another case. The surveys, which ask jurors for their opinions on how the proceedings were conducted, are standard procedure.

But Stephens County District Judge Joe Enos said there was no way Dyer’s trial could proceed in good faith –– even if the questionnaires had nothing to do with Dyer’s case. “It could very well have had an impact,” Enos told the court. The judge scheduled a new trial for April 16. ( continue to full post… )

All Darren Wesley Huff wanted to do was arrest some county officials in Tennessee who refused to indict President Obama for using a fraudulent birth certificate. The problem is, that’s not really a criminal offense. And Huff had no authority anyway.

But he was a member of the Georgia Militia and the Oath Keepers, both antigovernment “Patriot” groups that see the federal government – and, presumably, Obama – as part of a global conspiracy to establish a socialistic, one-world government.  ( continue to full post… )

QUARTSZITE, Ariz. — In the heart of the Sonoran Desert, in a scruffy town populated by nomad retirees, inveterate rock hounds and a nearly 70-year-old nudist bookseller who claims to be the first male stripper in the country, the antigovernment “Patriot” group Oath Keepers has decided to take a stand.

Quartzsite has only 3,800 permanent residents in homes strung out along both sides of Interstate 10 as it cuts westward to California. But here, the Oath Keepers argue, the banner of tyranny has already been raised. “This is the start. We want to set an example here,” Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes said Saturday after a two-mile march scheduled as part of a “Liberty Festival” in Quartzsite. “If every community across the country simply did what’s being done right here – right here, right now – we would restore our republic.”

What’s being done in Quartzsite is a response to a complicated tale of alleged small-town corruption that pits the town’s police chief against many of his officers and a number of citizens — complicated enough that it’s hard to say at this stage who’s right. But the Oath Keepers says on its website that it “considers the Quartzsite saga to be a vital pivot point on which small-town America shall awaken to the encroachment of corruption and violation of rights from Federal levels downward into our local communities and our daily lives.” ( continue to full post… )

A federal fugitive with past ties to the Patriot group Oath Keepers was arrested without incident Thursday southwest of Houston, Texas, just days after fleeing a campground during a law enforcement dragnet.

Charles Alan Dyer, 31, a former Marine, was arrested after leaving a Sonic drive-in where he had purchased a Route 44 red cherry limeade, The Houston Chronicle reported. Fort Bend County sheriff’s Deputy Jeremy Goodrich, who made the arrest, said Dyer was  wearing a baseball cap, blue jeans, with a T-shirt over his shoulder. After providing a fictitious name, he was arrested without resisting and seemed very tired, the deputy said. ”He said he was just done,” Goodrich said.

Deputies found $1,000 in cash and a GPS device on Dyer, who had been hiding along the Brazos River during the day. Officials say he had been in the Fort Bend County area for three to four days. The wanted man apparently hung out along the Brazos River during the day and would come out at night, searching for food, sheriff’s deputies said.

( continue to full post… )

A college student in Waterloo, Iowa, was killed in a possible hate crime. According to a friend of the victim, a group of individuals taunted the victim with anti-gay slurs, prompting a fight. The victim was knocked to the ground and kicked in the head; he later died. Police are still searching for the suspects.

The manhunt continues for an Oklahoma militiaman accused of sexual assault. Charles Alan Dyer is accused of raping a 7-year-old girl and then fleeing authorities. Police are now concentrating on a small Texas town.

Los Angeles police are investigating a hate crime after a local synagogue was vandalized with white supremacist symbols. Police say that swastikas with “666” and “Go Home” were spray-painted in the property.

Charles Dyer is something of problem for the Oath Keepers, a group that started three years ago to encourage police officers and military personnel to disobey unconstitutional orders. A veteran Marine with time served in Iraq, he might have seemed to be a model of the kind of person the group wants to attract.

But then the self-described Oath Keepers member went on the lam in Oklahoma to avoid trial on charges that he raped a child. He issued threatening, conspiracy-theorizing communiqués that left no room for doubt as to his intentions were police to catch up with him.

“I have been pushed to the limits by law enforcement and the judicial system in an attempt to cause me to take violent actions against them,” Dyer wrote in an E-mail to his family. “Our judicial system is nothing more than a system of liars and crooks working under the color of the law, where the rich go free and the poor are made to suffer injustice. … Something must be done to expose it.” ( continue to full post… )

Four self-described white supremacists in Houston have been arrested for brutally beating a black man at a bus stop. The Harris County district attorney is receiving criticism for not charging the men, members of the Aryan Brotherhood, with a hate crime.

An Arizona man implicated in the home-invasion murder of a Latino man and his daughter has been sentenced to two life terms in prison, one without parole. Albert Gaxiola was convicted for his role in the murder of Brisenia and Raul Flores in a robbery designed to fund the anti-immigrant Minuteman American Defense organization.

Police in Oklahoma are searching for a militiaman accused of raping a 7-year-old family member. Charles Dyer, a former Marine and online figure known as the “July 4 Patriot,” missed a court hearing on Monday and then sent an E-mail to his attorney stating that if he is not heard from in 90 days, he is dead. A nationwide manhunt is now under way for Dyer.

A man implicated in a potential hate crime committed on Friday in Santa Barbara has turned himself in. Ryan Christopher Zietlow-Brown was arrested and charged with attempted murder for stabbing an African-American man with a pair of scissors as he walked down the street with a white man.

This is getting embarrassing. Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes keeps insisting his year-old organization is composed of nothing more than patriotic, Constitution-loving Americans who aren’t a threat to anybody.

Then his members prove otherwise.

The latest is Matthew Fairfield, a suburban Cleveland man who has been sitting in jail since April in lieu of $1 million bail as he awaits trial on 54 criminal counts related to his alleged storing of a live napalm bomb at his suburban Cleveland, Ohio, home, as well as keeping explosives at a friend’s home in Cleveland. A judge this week ruled that Fairfield, 30, is competent to stand trial. He is the president of a local Oath Keepers chapter, according to a prosecutor.

Fairfield was arrested after police found a napalm bomb and another explosive device above the garage at his house in the city of North Olmsted. They also confiscated two assault rifles and several other firearms from the Cleveland home. Fairfield was convicted and sentenced to two years of probation in February for carrying concealed weapons, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

He is but the latest Oath Keeper to run afoul of the law. Early last month, a Georgia Oath Keeper was busted for allegedly plotting to take control of a Madisonville, Tenn., courthouse and place two dozen federal, state and local officials under citizen’s arrest. Police nabbed Darren Huff in his pickup truck, which was adorned with the Oath Keepers logo, before that could happen. He was armed with a pistol and an assault rifle. ( continue to full post… )