This is reality not conspiracy

(These are the minutemen that murdered a Man and his 9 year old daughter because they mistakenly thought the man was a Mexican drug dealer and wanted to rob him to further their racist agenda)

Separate trials for trio charged in Arivaca double-killing case
By Kim Smith Arizona Daily Star | Posted: Monday, October 25, 2010 4:21 pm

The three people accused of killing an Arivaca man and his 9-year-old daughter will be tried during separate trials.

Although Pima County Superior Court Judge John Leonardo had already decided Jason Bush, 36, should be tried separately from Shawna Forde, 43, and Albert Gaxiola, 43, he decided Monday Gaxiola and Forde ought to be tried separately as well.

Forde's defense attorney, Eric Larsen, had argued the two ought to have separate trials because of what could happen during the sentencing phase, assuming they are convicted.

Larsen said if Gaxiola decided to express remorse it would put Forde "into an untenable choice of either not allocuting, thereby looking like a cold blooded killer in front of the jury, or being forced to give up a constitutional right to remain silent just so she could attempt to be on the same moral ground as Mr. Gaxiola."

The defense attorney also said that if the two are tried and convicted together, they might end up competing in terms of culpability and mitigation.

"Comparing whose childhood was worse and whose effected them more as adults is not the way to decide whether a person lives or dies," Larsen said.

Prosecutors did not object to the motion.

The trio are facing the death penalty if convicted of the first-degree murder of Raul Flores, 29, and Brisenia Flores on May 30, 2009.

Authorities believe Forde thought Flores was a drug dealer and recruited a group to raid his house for drugs, cash and guns to help fund her organization, Minutemen American Defense.

Forde is scheduled to go to trial Jan. 11, Bush March 15 and Gaxiola June 1.

http://azstarnet.com/news/local/crime/a ... 03286.html

 

And this is a very related article....


Nativist Militias Get a Tea-Party Makeover
Gaiutra Bahadur
October 28, 2010

The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute provided support for this article.

In August of 2009, Al Garza, a leader in the anti-immigrant movement, left his post as vice president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC), once the largest, richest and most politically connected border vigilante group in the country. In an e-mail to supporters, Garza explained: I do not see an end in sight for the problems plaguing what was once the greatest citizen movement in America."

It had been an embarrassing summer for the group. A former member, Shawna Forde, was arrested and charged with murdering a Latino man and his 10-year-old daughter in Arizona. Forde allegedly believed that she would find drugs and cash in the victim's home, on a dirt road only a few miles from the US–Mexico border. Prosecutors contend that Forde was enacting a delusional plan to fund her breakaway faction—the Washington State–based Minutemen American Defense—by robbing Latin American drug cartels that she imagined were out to get her. The details about her fringe character that later emerged—her interest in starting an underground militia, her string of arrests for prostitution and petty theft, information from a co-defendant that her nickname was "White," because "she hates all ethnicity with the exception of Caucasians"—further wrecked whatever credibility the Minutemen had.

The publicity surrounding the case enabled Garza to recruit hundreds, including former Minutemen, to an alternative group he soon created, The Patriot's Coalition. "A lot of people felt, well, you're a Minuteman, you're a killer," Garza told me, at a truck stop near his home in Cochise County, Arizona. "The name Minuteman has been tainted by organizations that didn't want us at the border, that say we're killers, that we've done harm." Fortunately for Garza and others, their desire to reinvent coincided with a unique opportunity to do so—the emergence of the Tea Party movement on the national political horizon.

A few months before he broke with the Minutemen, Garza met Joanne Daley, his local Tea Party coordinator, at a tax day protest she had organized. Daley was a nexus of conservatism in Cochise County, spearheading health care reform town halls and a chapter of Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project. When Daley met Garza, she said, "we…found out we had a lot in common, mostly outrage." And when the time came for Garza to rebrand himself and his cause, he turned to Daley. She had expertise seeding nonprofits, developed through an old job with the state of Arizona. She registered Garza's new group with the Arizona Corporation Commission, listing him as president and herself as a member of the board of directors.

* * *

The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps dissolved this past spring, after years of infighting and accusations of financial mismanagement. But the demise of the group, once so mediagenic that it spawned many imitators, does not signal the death of organized nativism in the United States. On the contrary, the anti-immigrant movement is stronger than ever. And it is gaining political muscle through its growing ties to other ultraconservative groups. Like Garza, many nativists are morphing into Tea Party irregulars. They are also redefining themselves more broadly as patriots, embracing a resurgent states rights movement to challenge the federal government's authority.

read the whole article:
http://www.thenation.com/article/155641 ... y-makeover