Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
The trial is over, but both Branch Davidians and supporters of the government are disappointed that reports of lying and misconduct have been ignored.
Jul 17, 2000 | Last Friday's verdict in the Branch Davidians' $675 million lawsuit against the federal government is reminiscent of a photograph taken shortly after Mount Carmel burned to the ground. The widely published photo shows federal agents sorting through the charred rubble of the Davidians' home. A pair of bulldozers is on the left. On the right is a flagpole topped by the American flag. Below it is the Texas flag. And below the Texas flag flutters a blue banner emblazoned with the initials ATF.
The photo tells a great deal about the government's attitude toward the Davidians in the hours after the deadly fire. "All those people may be dead," the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms flag seems to say, "but we won the battle."
By winning the civil trial, the government has prevailed again over the Davidians. But the trial and the verdict have left both sides disappointed. U.S. District Judge Walter Smith Jr. limited both sides to 40 hours of presentation, a ruling that kept mountains of evidence out of court and many pivotal witnesses off the stand. There remains much that the public doesn't know about the deadly standoff, which resulted in the deaths of 80 Branch Davidians -- including 18 children under age 10 -- and four ATF agents.
Supporters of the federal position are pleased their side prevailed, but some are angry that the Department of Justice hasn't prosecuted federal miscreants who lied about what happened at Mount Carmel. And both sides fear that supporters of the Davidians may express their anger by taking action against the federal government.
"This will be more salt in the wound of people who were hoping that this trial would provide some kind of redemption for the Davidians," said Stuart A. Wright, a sociology professor at Lamar University who has written extensively about Waco. "This trial pacified them for a while. Now I'm wondering if we won't see more militancy from the people on the far right."
Wright's fears are apparently shared by the U.S. Marshals Service, which provided tight security during the four-week trial. At least four marshals were inside the courtroom each day, and police cars were stationed adjacent to the courthouse. After the verdict, when government lawyers emerged from the courthouse to talk with reporters, nearly a dozen security officers scanned the area, watching for signs of trouble.
Shortly after noon on Friday, Smith instructed the five-member jury to answer four questions: Did the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms use excessive force and fire indiscriminately during the initial raid? Did FBI agents act negligently, going beyond their orders, in their use of tanks during the final assault? Did those tanks cause the April 19, 1993, fire? And were FBI commanders negligent in deciding not to have firefighting equipment available on the scene?
By 2:45, the jury had sided with the government on all the charges.
Smith did not allow anyone to question the jurors about their verdict. In fact, the jurors had already gone home when Smith came into the courtroom with the verdict in hand. "They didn't want to talk to anybody," Smith told the courtroom. Then, as he turned to the jurors' answers, Smith said, "I can't read the name of the presiding juror."
Thus, after seven years of waiting for a trial to answer key questions relating to one of the bloodiest police conflicts in American history, the press was not allowed to ask questions of the jurors, nor even learn their names.
One wonders what the jurors (two white women, one white man, one black woman and one black man) thought about the questions they were not told to answer. For instance, why, instead of sending 76 heavily armed, body-armor-clad ATF agents to Mount Carmel, didn't federal officials arrest David Koresh when he was shopping for groceries in Waco?
Nor did the jury hear or see any evidence dealing with other questions raised by the government's actions at Mount Carmel. The absence of such evidence was due to Smith's broad interpretation of the "discretionary function exemption" law that exempts federal officials from liability for actions they make in good faith while working for the government.
Important issues -- such as the use of large amounts of tear gas, 700 tons' worth of tanks and psychological warfare against the Davidians -- were scarcely mentioned during the trial. The jury did not hear about training the ATF undertook at Fort Hood with Army Special Forces units in close-quarters combat in the days before the Feb. 28, 1993, raid on Mount Carmel. And it heard few details about the instruction Special Forces medics gave ATF agents on how to insert intravenous needles in the field and how to treat sucking chest wounds.
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