Weaver Case Alters Indictment System U.S. Attorney In Idaho Adds Reviews, Safeguards To Process

Idaho’s U.S. attorney’s office has made significant changes in the way it handles indictments since the Randy Weaver case.

But Idaho U.S. Attorney Betty Richardson noted in a memo to Deputy U.S. Attorney General Jamie Gorelick that the federal government itself was involved in reviewing Weaver’s indictment.

“If the process wasn’t good enough, it wasn’t just an Idaho problem,” Richardson said Friday. “Let’s not just point the finger out West.”

Gorelick issued a report earlier this month that was sharply critical of the U.S. attorney’s office, the FBI and the U.S. Marshal Service for their handling of the Weaver case. Weaver, a separatist who holed up in his cabin near Naples, Idaho, rather than appear in court on a weapons charge, drew hordes of federal agents to a 1992 gunfight and standoff in which a deputy U.S. Marshal and Weaver’s wife and young son died.

Weaver and family friend Kevin Harris were subsequently acquitted of murder and conspiracy charges in the deputy marshal’s death. The two now have multimillion-dollar lawsuits pending against the federal government.

Gorelick’s report included charges that the Idaho U.S. attorney’s office “drafted an inappropriately broad and aggressive indictment (and) failed to provide for internal review thereof.”

It also criticized the office for rejecting a Marshals Service plan to negotiate surrender terms with Weaver. The report said the office should have agreed to rescind the warrant for Weaver’s arrest, and then reissue it secretly.

Richardson declined to comment on that criticism, saying full information about the handling of the case hasn’t yet been publicly released. A full U.S. Department of Justice report on the case has been kept under wraps while Boundary County Prosecutor Randy Day considers whether to file charges of his own.

Richardson said in her memo to Gorelick that criminal indictments now go through several additional reviews. At least seven days before an indictment is presented to a grand jury, it must be presented to the office’s criminal chief for review. In complex or sensitive cases, an additional in-depth memorandum about the prosecution must be reviewed and approved both by Richardson and her criminal chief, Terry Derden.

Prosecutors now meet prior to each grand jury session to review proposed indictments. And the criminal chief and or a senior litigator attends each grand jury session, along with the attorney handling the case.

“I think we have improved the indictment review process overall,” Richardson said. “Being human, we will probably make mistakes from time to time. But I think we have many more safeguards in the process.”

In her memo to Gorelick, Richardson noted that former U.S. Attorney Maurice Ellsworth and two deputies submitted the Weaver indictment to the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., then flew there for a meeting with the department’s Terrorism and Violent Crime section to review it.

She also pointed to increased cooperation between the U.S. attorney’s office and local law enforcement. That’s been a priority for Richardson in her year and a half in office, she said.

John Russell, a spokesman with the Department of Justice, said Friday the department had “no response at this time.”

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