Bombing Suspect Tells Jurors He’s Innocent Ratigan Takes Witness Stand To Attacks Banks, Abortion Doctors

(From For The Record, September 30, 1997:) Not sentenced: Charles H. Barbee, Robert S. Berry and Verne Jay Merrell face mandatory life imprisonment after being convicted in a series of Spokane Valley bombings and robberies, but they have not been formally sentenced. A Saturday story about another man still on trial implied otherwise.

North Idaho resident Brian Ratigan told jurors Friday that he played no role in last year’s bombing of a Planned Parenthood clinic and a robbery of a Spokane Valley bank.

In two hours of testimony, the 39-year-old Ratigan railed against banks for charging interest and insisted that those performing abortions deserve the death penalty.

Many white separatists like Ratigan say the charging of interest by banks is usury and unlawful.

Ratigan is charged with conspiracy, destruction of a building, armed bank robbery and use of a firearm in a crime of violence. Conviction on the bombing and bank robbery charges would carry a penalty of mandatory life imprisonment.

Three other Sandpoint-area white separatists, Charles Barbee, Robert Berry and Verne Jay Merrell, were convicted earlier this year of two bank robberies and three Spokane bombings.

They’ve been sentenced to life in prison.

Ratigan, who was arrested during the first of two trials of the three other men, is being tried separately. He’s accused of participating only in the July 12, 1996, bombing and robbery of the Valley branch of U.S. Bank.

Defense attorneys Terence Ryan and Don Hellman rested their case before noon Friday, calling only one other witness after Ratigan.

Judge Frem Nielsen told jurors they will hear closing arguments and begin deliberating on Monday.

Ratigan said he knew the three other men but did not consider them close friends. “I was just getting to know them,” he said.

During cross-examination, he told Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Rice that on July 12 last year, he was in Idaho with Merrell and Berry.

Prosecutors contend Ratigan and his accomplices acted on their religious beliefs against banking and abortion.

But Ratigan testified that his religious beliefs in Yahweh - the Hebrew name for God - are that only God and Jesus can punish those who break the Old Testament laws.

After saying that abortion was murder and should be punished accordingly, Ratigan denied that such a belief allows him or anyone else to kill those performing abortions.

“That’s not for me, but for our father Yahweh to decide,” he said.

The prosecution rested on Thursday after calling 61 witnesses, many of them FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents who had testified in the two earlier trials. The initial trial of Merrell, Berry and Barbee ended with a hung jury.

Government witnesses presented evidence that Ratigan was the masked man who tossed a pipe bomb into the lobby of an unoccupied Planned Parenthood clinic and held an assault weapon as a nearby bank was robbed a short time later on July 12.

Among those called this week by the government was an FBI agent who used bank surveillance films to estimate the heights of three men who entered the U.S. Bank lobby during the robbery that netted about $36,000.

The defense presented several witnesses Thursday afternoon who attacked the credibility and stability of a key government witness, Loren Berry.

Berry testified Ratigan had told him he was the fourth accomplice in the July 12 bombing and bank robbery.

Ratigan’s attorneys portrayed Berry, whose brother is Robert Berry, as a liar who hoped to win a book deal by ratting on his brother.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: WHAT’S NEXT Closing arguments are scheduled for Monday. The jury is expected to begin deliberations the same day.

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Tom Sowa Staff writer The Associated Press contributed to this report.