Spokane Bomber Files Request For New Trial As Sentencing Nears, Another Wants Prisons Barred From Treating Him Medically

Tue., Oct. 28, 1997

By Bill Morlin billm@spokesman.com

Two men convicted of domestic terrorism in the Spokane Valley are making last-minute requests of a federal judge who will sentence them later this week.

Charles H. Barbee is asking for a new trial.

Verne Jay Merrell wants a court order barring the U.S. Bureau of Prisons from giving him inoculations and medicine, and from taking blood or body-fluid samples.

Both men face mandatory sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Merrell, 52, Barbee, 43, and Robert S. Berry, 43, all of Sandpoint, were convicted in July of three bombings and two bank robberies in 1996 in the Spokane Valley.

Merrell says he won’t get to heaven if prison guards give him a shot, a pill or touch his blood. Because he considers his body the temple of God, or Yahweh, Merrell said his “conscience and firmly held beliefs will not allow me to tolerate such intrusion.”

“It is my belief that to allow or tolerate any such intrusion would deprive me of my eternity as promised to me by the word of God,” Merrell said in a legal filing.

Merrell, considered by investigators to be the leader of a team of Phineas Priest bombers, is scheduled to be sentenced at 10:30 a.m. Thursday by U.S. District Judge Frem Nielsen.

The judge likely will rule on Merrell’s request at that time.

Barbee will face the judge at 11 a.m. Friday.

He seeks a new trial on the grounds that he had “ineffective counsel” during a jury trial.

Barbee said he was cajoled into being represented by federal defender Roger Peven and threatened with removal from the courtroom if he asked too many questions. Barbee said he wanted to act as his own lawyer and ask more detailed questions of witnesses.

“The harsh penalties involved are not suffered by counsel appointed by this court but are imposed upon the defendant,” Barbee wrote in his legal motion.

“These penalties have such an adverse effect on (my) family as well as (me) that in some respects they rival the death penalty,” he said.

Brian Ratigan, the fourth man convicted of involvement in the domestic terrorism case, is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 12. He faces a minimum of 50 years in prison.

, DataTimes

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