The National Lawyers Guild released a pretty incredible statement about this trial. They basically were not allowed to mount a defense, in blatant violation of their constitutional rights.
> Alarmingly, this mistrial order is just the latest example of attacks on the Prairieland Defendants’ constitutional rights to access to counsel, a fair and impartial jury, an adequate defense, a public trial, and more. Judge Pittman has made highly unusual moves that suppress defense teams and which federal lawyers have not seen during their entire careers:
[...]
> NLG remains extremely concerned about these cases. Defendants’ First Amendment rights to free expression, assembly, and association; their Sixth Amendment rights to counsel; their Fifth Amendment rights to a public trial; and their Second Amendment rights to bear arms are under attack in North Texas. If unchecked and ignored, this case and the judicial decisions coming from it will set a very dark precedent for the rest of the country.
Note that Song was a firearms instructor and a United States Marine Corps Veteran .. I gather the State really wanted to send a message with the 100 year sentence handed down to him. But on another note, he did brandish a rifle and shoot a police officer, anyone could expect the worst for that. I guess they can appeal ?
SauciestGNU 2 days ago [-]
He wanted to claim an affirmative defense that he shot in order to defend others, since the cop who was shot had drawn and was aiming a firearm. The judge prohibited the defendant from bringing that defense claim (not that it likely would have worked).
Frankly I don't see how a cop presenting unwarranted deadly force is different from a random person doing the same. Especially now that we've had a decade of body worn camera footage to prove just how lawless American police are.
Exoristos 2 days ago [-]
"Family members and supporters ... called the punishment cruel, callous and starkly disproportionate to the defendants’ actions." The defendants were convicted "on a variety of federal charges, including riot, material support for terrorists, attempted murder, possession and conspiracy to use explosives, and conspiracy to conceal documents."
What is a proportionate sentence for convictions like these? In other words, is there a norm when looking at similar convictions?
NDlurker 2 days ago [-]
There's a guy in my town who murdered a teenage girl then cut her up and threw her in a dumpster. He's got less time than these people.
Exoristos 2 days ago [-]
I'm reading sentencing guidelines for material support of terrorism.[0] It looks like they normally max out at 15 years (20 if in support of certain orgs). I saw somewhere that a study of 261 cases found an average sentence of 13 years. So, ceteris peribus, these do seem extremely high.
Well one person got 30 years for "concealing documents" -- they moved a box of anarchist zines from their apartment to their car
fuckinpuppers 1 days ago [-]
And yet the guy concealing documents, moving them so the fbi couldn’t find them, storing them insecurely - nothing
LocalH 12 hours ago [-]
ACAB
APAB
pm90 2 days ago [-]
This is absolutely outrageous. A complete mockery of the criminal justice system and especially of Texas.
jmye 2 days ago [-]
Hardly seems a mockery of Texas. This is pretty on brand for the kind of state and the kind of people that keep re-electing Paxton.
happa 2 days ago [-]
The other side said the same thing when the J6 rioters were sentenced. Likewise, these people will also get pardoned in a couple of years, so it's mostly symbolic.
2 days ago [-]
NDlurker 2 days ago [-]
Concealing a document? Conspiracy to conceal a document? What? I need to Google that. Sounds un-constitutional af!
tbrownaw 2 days ago [-]
Hiding evidence tends to be bad, even when that evidence wouldn't itself be a problem without a crime for it to be evidence of.
haswell 2 days ago [-]
Surely not 30 years bad.
tiahura 2 days ago [-]
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queenkjuul 2 days ago [-]
Moved a box of zines to their car
pseudo0 2 days ago [-]
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queenkjuul 2 days ago [-]
How are zines evidence, and you genuinely think they deserve 30 years for that? For knowing someone who shot a cop?
queenkjuul 1 days ago [-]
You're actually not even correct. The guy wasn't at the protest, and had no reason to think cops would be searching his house, and didn't know the person who shot the cop
Accessory to assault on a police officer? What luck! That happens to be exactly the crime our beloved president pardoned a bunch of people for recently.
burnt-resistor 1 days ago [-]
Order, now my court is in session, will you please stand? First, allow me to introduce myself, my name is Judge Hundred Years. Some people call me Judge Dread.
yiggnewer 2 days ago [-]
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MisterMower 2 days ago [-]
[flagged]
TrackerFF 2 days ago [-]
Fireworks and flares are pretty common, yeah.
But then again, when you've been designated as "terrorists" due to protesting against ICE, fireworks turn into explosives, and suddenly there's no difference between bottle rockets and a IED.
No one is arguing that the guy that shot the guard shouldn't face harder punishments, even though he argued that he was shooting in self-defense of the other members. Charging and sentencing those other protesters for plotting to kill someone is ridiculous.
breakyerself 2 days ago [-]
What about moving a box of zines?
MisterMower 2 days ago [-]
Estrada was convicted of "intending to conceal the box’s contents and impair its availability for use in a federal grand jury and federal criminal proceeding," not for just moving a box of zines. [1]
Tampering with evidence is a serious crime. I suppose you think that Trump's mishandling of classified information was just "moving a box of documents", too?
He was charged with 37 felony counts, the most serious of which carried a maximum sentence of 20 years. Had he been convicted he would have surely gone to prison for far longer than Estrada. [1]
Both the crimes Trump was charged with and Estrada was convicted of are very serious. But to some people, the severity of the penalties are only an issue when the politics of the person charged with them aligns with their own.
The Wikipedia link I posted should answer your question comprehensively.
2 days ago [-]
tastyface 1 days ago [-]
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tiahura 2 days ago [-]
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tastyface 2 days ago [-]
You agree with essentially a life sentence for moving pamphlets around? What a vomit-inducing thing to believe.
MisterMower 2 days ago [-]
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tiahura 2 days ago [-]
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SauciestGNU 2 days ago [-]
A jury of the dumbest motherfuckers found that, after the judge declared a mistrial and threw out the initial jury because he perceived them as too sympathetic to the defense. Rigged trial run by Nazis juried by Nazis.
jmye 2 days ago [-]
> You agree with essentially a life sentence for moving pamphlets around?
That was the question you were asked. It was a short comment with very few big words. Why are you talking about whether it’s a crime? Why the rank dishonesty?
Is it too hard a question for you to figure out how to answer?
tiahura 1 days ago [-]
Answering a question with false premise is tricky.
tastyface 2 days ago [-]
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what 2 days ago [-]
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2 days ago [-]
delichon 2 days ago [-]
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chomp 2 days ago [-]
Andy Ngo is an awful person, surely there’s a better source
jauntywundrkind 2 days ago [-]
Yeah, I had no idea until recently. He's basically Mr Anti Anti Fascist, has been telling the White House to go after them.
> Ngo lobbied the administration to name “antifa” a foreign terrorist organization — on par with al Qeada or ISIS — at a White House event in the fall.
Used to think he was a kind of harmless idiot, but this is incredibly actively bad & toxic a person.
tastyface 2 days ago [-]
[flagged]
tbrownaw 2 days ago [-]
Headline: "for Common Protest Activity"
Body: "material support for terrorists, attempted murder, possession and conspiracy to use explosives"
Um?
Brian_K_White 2 days ago [-]
Um what? The activity in the body aligns with the title.
Even the part that sounds the worst if you take it out of context, was not a murder or even failed attempted murder, but the successful prevention of a murder.
MisterMower 2 days ago [-]
The activity in the body does not align with the title. Even putting aside whether such activities are justified in this case or acceptable in general, people do not commonly attempt murder or posses explosives at protests.
alexgieg 2 days ago [-]
What the sentencing calls attempted murder, the defendants are describing as one of the protesters watching a police officer preparing to shoot another protester who was running away on their back, and thus shooting in the direction of the would-be cold blood murderer to prevent the assassination attempt. If this description is correct (a big if, but it seems the judge didn't care for examining the evidence), then it's something that wouldn't have happened at all weren't for actions of the officer himself.
As for explosives, the defendants say it was fireworks. Carrying fireworks at protests is common.
MisterMower 1 days ago [-]
Yes, that was the defense’s argument, which was ultimately unpersuasive to a jury. Rehashing it here doesn’t make it more persuasive or effective.
I’ve been to several protests over the years and at exactly zero of them did I encounter fireworks of any kind. Maybe we run in different circles.
There is no non-criminal reason to use fireworks at a protest. Most cities ban their use altogether except for a few days a year around Independence Day and New Year’s Day.
alexgieg 21 hours ago [-]
I'm not American and don't know much about how protests are done in the US. From my perspective what you describe sounds extremely weird, in a cultural shock kind of way. I mean, how is it that, in the US, one can carry actual guns, including military-grade weapons, to protests, but carrying fireworks, whose core purpose is to make loud noise to force people to pay attention to the protest, is forbidden?
This sounds to me _exactly_ as weird as when I watch on TV those little gated "free speech zones" American cities have been implementing and, even worse, protesters obediently limiting their protest to within he gated area, "conveniently" placed several blocks away from where the protest would be effective.
Weird. Very, very weird.
MisterMower 8 hours ago [-]
I mean this in the kindest way possible: if you're not from the US and your only window into our country is TV and the internet, consider the possibility that your assumptions about how things are here might not match reality.
Brian_K_White 16 hours ago [-]
It wasn't them who attempted a murder, it was them who prevented it. Holy shit dude.
queenkjuul 2 days ago [-]
Did you read what they actually did or did you just read the charges?
Rendered at 06:09:12 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
> Alarmingly, this mistrial order is just the latest example of attacks on the Prairieland Defendants’ constitutional rights to access to counsel, a fair and impartial jury, an adequate defense, a public trial, and more. Judge Pittman has made highly unusual moves that suppress defense teams and which federal lawyers have not seen during their entire careers:
[...]
> NLG remains extremely concerned about these cases. Defendants’ First Amendment rights to free expression, assembly, and association; their Sixth Amendment rights to counsel; their Fifth Amendment rights to a public trial; and their Second Amendment rights to bear arms are under attack in North Texas. If unchecked and ignored, this case and the judicial decisions coming from it will set a very dark precedent for the rest of the country.
https://www.nlg.org/all-eyes-on-north-texas/
Frankly I don't see how a cop presenting unwarranted deadly force is different from a random person doing the same. Especially now that we've had a decade of body worn camera footage to prove just how lawless American police are.
What is a proportionate sentence for convictions like these? In other words, is there a norm when looking at similar convictions?
0. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R41333
APAB
Fucking hell.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jun/...
But then again, when you've been designated as "terrorists" due to protesting against ICE, fireworks turn into explosives, and suddenly there's no difference between bottle rockets and a IED.
No one is arguing that the guy that shot the guard shouldn't face harder punishments, even though he argued that he was shooting in self-defense of the other members. Charging and sentencing those other protesters for plotting to kill someone is ridiculous.
Tampering with evidence is a serious crime. I suppose you think that Trump's mishandling of classified information was just "moving a box of documents", too?
1. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/antifa-cell-members-convicted...
Both the crimes Trump was charged with and Estrada was convicted of are very serious. But to some people, the severity of the penalties are only an issue when the politics of the person charged with them aligns with their own.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_prosecution_of_Donald_...
That was the question you were asked. It was a short comment with very few big words. Why are you talking about whether it’s a crime? Why the rank dishonesty?
Is it too hard a question for you to figure out how to answer?
> Ngo lobbied the administration to name “antifa” a foreign terrorist organization — on par with al Qeada or ISIS — at a White House event in the fall.
https://bsky.app/profile/hannahgais.bsky.social/post/3moyib6...
Used to think he was a kind of harmless idiot, but this is incredibly actively bad & toxic a person.
Body: "material support for terrorists, attempted murder, possession and conspiracy to use explosives"
Um?
Even the part that sounds the worst if you take it out of context, was not a murder or even failed attempted murder, but the successful prevention of a murder.
As for explosives, the defendants say it was fireworks. Carrying fireworks at protests is common.
I’ve been to several protests over the years and at exactly zero of them did I encounter fireworks of any kind. Maybe we run in different circles.
There is no non-criminal reason to use fireworks at a protest. Most cities ban their use altogether except for a few days a year around Independence Day and New Year’s Day.
This sounds to me _exactly_ as weird as when I watch on TV those little gated "free speech zones" American cities have been implementing and, even worse, protesters obediently limiting their protest to within he gated area, "conveniently" placed several blocks away from where the protest would be effective.
Weird. Very, very weird.