MNN. 15, 2016. The following jury summation by one of the victims/plaintiffs was stopped half way through by Judge Frederick Scullin. NYS delayed this trial for almost 20 years.
Freddie Scullin [Bones] instructing his court.
Three lawyers will Appeal the Jury Verdict in Jones, et al v. Parmley, et al to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of all 15 Plaintiffs.
“We tried to give you evidence of what happened to us on May 18, 1997:
1.The easement issue is false. In Oct. 2005 Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the US Supreme Court for the 2ND Circuit Court explained in Jones v. Parmley that NY Interstate 81 is on the Jones property. The Jones Family gave NYS Dept. of Public Works a limited right to go on their private property to repair the highway. No right was given to the NYS Police. This includes acreage next to the highway on which the Jones house and yard are located. The NYSP I-81 INDIAN Detail was trespassing when they attacked the people on May 18, 1997. [2nd Circuit opinion].
The attempted massacre to get us off a highway on our land which we were not on is not justified. All INDIAN Detail police witnesses at the trial said the plan was to clear the highway. They marched, lined up, came onto the private property towards us, beat us and then arrested us. It is unlawful to attack a peaceful gathering on private property!
2.District Attorney Mulvey said it’s all about money. We are all pro se, without lawyers, because our lawyers [Hoffman, Aniello and the others] dropped us without notice. There were over 100 of us victims, mostly women and children. 125 plus and over 200 Jane and John Does were on the INDIAN Detail who acted as a unit. There are now 54 charged!
I-81 INDIAN DETAIL MISSION STATEMENT.
3.The attack, beating and arrests were criminal,. It was during the start of the ohenton kariwa tekwen, a sacred ceremony. They busted it up, violating our first amendment rights.
4.NYS Police has no Caucasian, African-American or any other racial profile Detail. Only an I-81 INDIAN Detail. We were singled out as INDIANS.
5.Mulvey demanded we identify our assailants when the INDIAN Detail can’t even identify each other. The INDIAN Detail met at the staging area at the Kmart and the Fire Hall in Nedrow to plan this premediated attack. There was to be no negotiation.
NYS INDIAN Detail two-step to knock out ceremonies among onkwe’hon:weh people at onondaga.
6.Mostly women and children were sitting around chatting at picnic tables on a nice sunny day. The children were playing nearby.
7.Videos show nobody on the highway then. Cars were slowed down.
8.At the ceremonial fire somebody said they saw cops marching down the highway towards us. We saw no one on the highway. The cops had stopped or slowed down the cars. We saw the military unit marching with riot gear, guns, batons and other war equipment. We felt totally threatened.
9.Most of us were around the ceremonial fire in the field about 150 yards from I-81. The attack was a violation of our inherent rights. The evidence proves we were not protesting. We immediately started looking for our children.
10. We saw the I-81 Indian Detail line up along the highway and silently march towards us. They were wearing military helmets, visors, we couldn’t see their eyes, no name plates and started doing their dirty deed. They started to hit everybody. There was chaos. Everyone was yelling, “Get the kids. They’re going to kill us”.
11.The INDIAN Detail surrounded us. We tried to back away. We never heard any commands that we disperse or that we would be arrested. My granddaughter had been grabbed and thrown into a van or car and driven away. I later found her waiting with other people at a restaurant.
12.Our children were hysterical, screaming and crying as they saw their parents being beaten. They will never forget this. The Indian Detail grabbed two children on Kennedy Road and slammed one of them against a car. They ran for their lives.
I-81 INDIAN Detail: “Just following orders”!
13.Women were shaking as they hid in the bush hanging on to their babies.
14. Why didn’t Beach and Parmley meet with us to politely ask, “Please don’t go on the road”. One squad car parked on the side of the highway would have been enough.
15.The Indian Detail was staged at the Fire Hall and Kmart. Over 75 victims are not here today. Some have passed away. This premeditated attack was based on surprise ambush tactics. One witness said that BIA tribal chiefs Oren Lyons and Ollie Gibson were at the fire hall during the planning of the attack. This indicates their complicity.
16.The Indian Detail wore no nameplates. [NYSP Supt.] George Beach went around the Fire Hall and ordered them to remove them so no one could identify them. As soon as they removed their badges, they all knew they were breaking the law.
Cops hard at work.
17.Everyone has a right to defend themselves against illegal assault by outside forces.
18.Dennis Blythe, the special investigator, met regularly for 12 years with the tribal chiefs at Orchard Valley golf club and sat in the longhouse with them. Setting up the Indian Detail racial profile means he, Parmley and Beach new such ceremonies are part of our culture. Their attack is an act of genocide to eliminate part of a racial group. Gibson told the Indian Detail to “arrest everyone”.
19. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. The First amendment provides that the cops have a duty to protect everyone’s right to have a ceremony, to assemble peacefully and to speak freely.
20. No one ever told us that we had done anything wrong. Budgie and Stone Horse both told the commanders that we were not going on the highway and that it was a peaceful gathering that had started on May 8th, which the cops were monitoring. All charges against us were dropped immediately.
21. I-81 Indian Detail worked as a unit and committed criminal assaults together. They should all be convicted. Everything happened to all of us.
22. Our limited evidence was not disputed nor denied. The Indian Detail said they did not remember very much. They never told us our rights. They had no dispersal plan. There was no dialogue with us. The metal tipped baton is a deadly weapon. In the Nuremburg Trial it was confirmed that “I was following orders” is not a defence. Those in cars and paddy wagons, out of sight, in the offices all played a role.
23. We were terrorized. Mr. Bucktooth was beaten by at least six cops near the ceremonial fire for holding a eagle feather fan. The medicine woman was sitting there when Trooper Smith picked her up with his baton. The handicapped child in the body cast was knocked over and trampled. There was no legal reason to touch any of us, to handcuff us, to rough us up, to push the women or anybody or pull babies out of their seats from the cars and throw them on the ground, to arrest an 11-year old girl and cuff her to a chair for hours at the Police station, or to knock a 6 months pregnant woman on her stomach to the ground and handcuff her behind her back.
Who are their peers?
24. The jury found the NYS I-81 INDIAN Detail not guilty.
25. Judge Scullin did not allow us to question each juror that was selected or to have our rightful say throughout the trial.
As Bobby Bare points out in his song “The Winner” as he sings to Judge Scullin [Bones]:“Now, you remind me a lot of my younger days, with your knuckles a’clenchin white. But, boy, I’m gonna sit right here and sip this beer all night. And if there’s somethin that you gotta gain or prove by winning some silly fight, well, okay, i quit, i lose, you’re the winner. So i stumbled from that barroom, not so tall and no so proud. Behind meIi still hear the hoots of laughter from the crowd. But my eyes still see and my nose still works and my teeth are all still in my mouth. And you know, I guess, that makes me the winner!”
Brenda Norrell has been a news reporter in Indian country for 29 years, serving as a writer for Navajo Times and a stringer for AP and USA Today during the 18 years she lived on the Navajo Nation. After being a longtime staff reporter for Indian Country Today, she was censored and terminated. She then created Censored News, focused on Indigenous Peoples and human rights, now in its fifth year.