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Brown Trial: July 7, 2009: Ed Brown takes the stand
By JJ MacNab | July 8, 2009
Whew! It’s just been one of those days.
The mystery of the elevator was solved, the prosecution rested their case after two witnesses, another juror has dropped out, leaving only one alternate, and it’s raining again in New Hampshire.
Oh, did I forget to mention that Ed Brown took the stand?
Silly me.
Witness Jamie Berry (Continued)
Mr. Berry continued his testimony with an email from Danny Riley to Reno in August 2007 outlining what supplies were still needed at the house. Considering that Reno was kicked off the Tax Denier Island in June, the timing of this correspondence seemed odd. Danny requested cardboard, nails (the bigger the better), two way radios, night vision goggles, motor oil, scanners, video cameras, throw away pre-paid cell phones, clothesline rope, and other various and sundry items that no good domestic terrorist would stay home without.
The last item on the list was … precious.
People to come and make a stand, to their death, if necessary.
Isn’t that sweet?
Mr. Berry then testified about the ongoing problem with the surveillance camera. When I heard that they were relying on a 56K modem connection, I had the sudden unexplainable urge to don leg warmers, lounge around in an off the shoulder sweatshirt, and comb my hair in a sideways ponytail. Who says the ‘80s are dead? I wear my sunglasses at night …
This witness repeated the prior testimony about Jason’s car accident and his colorful comments about the punishment for treason being death.
Witness Ken Nunes
Mr. Nunes is now a Senior Inspector with the US Marshals and was a Deputy US Marshal during the 9+ months of the standoff. His specialty is fugitive investigations. Can you really read that without thinking Tommy Lee Jones? Be honest, now.
This witness testified that Ed was always armed, that the witness obtained mid-standoff photos of Ed from a Walmart kiosk showing Ed wearing a gun, and that Jason said stupid violent stuff when he crashed Elaine’s car. Note to self: Do not get embarassing photos developed at a Walmart kiosk.
The Prosecution rested.
After some basic criminal trial housekeeping – striking superfluous stuff in the indictment, introducing redacted items into evidence, and the Rule 29 Motions to Dismiss – Mr. Iacopino put Edward-Lewis punctuation Brown on the stand.
Witness Edward-Lewis: of the family or clan Brown©
Still wearing his khaki prison pajamas, blue deck shoes, and grey sweatshirt, Ed was quite the sight as he took the stand clutching his Bible in one hand, his Uniform Commercial Code book in the other, and a red pen in his pocket.
When asked by his counsel to introduce himself, Ed carefully spelled out his name, emphasizing which letters were capitalized and which were lower case, and making sure that the court record reflected that he had a full colon.
His nerves were showing when he confused his age and his year of birth.
Ed has a GED level education, with a college level course in philosophy. He was born in Massachusetts but was a ward of the state from age 6 to age 16. He’s lived in MA, CA, FL, PA, and the northeast, and even spent five years homeless in his car.
His job history is a hodge podge of short term employment: he’d worked in a hat shop, a shoe store, a linen mill, and moved from job to job every month or so because he got bored. His goal was to wear a suit, and be a real businessman.
He got involved in Fuller brush sales, Amway, comb sales, a restaurant named The Lobster Trap, two beauty salons, Ed’s Bait Shop, and a collection agency before hitting it big time as a cockroach exterminator. He liked sales, and developed a pheromone-based “sex trap” for cockroaches, and he “hit the streets of Los Angeles” with the contraptions, but they didn’t really work. He claims to have worked with two professors from UCLA and UC Riverside to develop a toxic free insecticide for cockroaches – boric acid. Considering that boric acid has been used as an insecticide since 1948, it was hard to share Ed’s excitement about his big discovery in the 1980s.
By then, Ed had a plan: International Cockroach Busters. When he approached the Long Beach navy base to get a contract to kill their cockroaches, they said no, and Ed testified that this “first encounter” with the federal government scarred him forever.
You’d think that being court marshaled by the Navy after his assault with a deadly weapon conviction might have been his first government experience, and might have played a factor in why the Navy didn’t want to hire him. But he didn’t think to tell the jury about that stuff.
He moved to New England and met Elaine when he wiped out an “almost complete infestation” in an apartment building that she owned. They “lived in sin” for a few years, married, and move to New Hampshire to settle down.
Ed: She was up-and-coming as a dentist and I was up-and-coming as an exterminator.
They eventually bought the Plainfield property and started building their home.
Ed said that he’d been a survivalist all of his life, and accumulated food, water, wood burnings stoves – “everything was taken into account since day one”.
Ed: We believed there was a coming crisis in this country.
He said that he was a member, and then leader of the US Constitution Rangers, but denied that the group was a militia. He said that that was “just a misconception put out there by the ADL.”
He complained that a small army was sent to Elaine’s dental practice in 2004 to search her books and records, and when he was arrested in 2006, he remembers taking the magazine out his pistol, and leaving it in the glove box of his car before the Marshals arrested him.
Ed: I could swear I unloaded by 45 and left it in the car. I thought, “This was not a time to be armed.”
Sure, Ed.
Ed talked about the first arrest in 2006, the first criminal trial, the beginning of the standoff, Dogwalker Day, and his eventual arrest without adding much new or interesting to the story already told by others in court. The general theme was that the government had wronged him repeatedly, that he was doing what “any American would do” and that he was scared on Dogwalker Day which is why he picked up that 50 caliber rifle.
He claimed that his opinions about government came from his interest in Ruby Ridge and Waco. He said that he’d called the Attorney General’s office in DC during Waco and told them to use sleeping gas but the feds ignored him and used deadly gas instead.
Sure, Ed.
Ed’s depiction of his pre-raid life with Elaine was pastoral and full of smiles and puppy dog tails.
Ed: We were a happy couple, living the American dream. We’d paid all of our debts and taxes.
The defense attorney asked several questions about Ed’s experience with the press and the standoff.
Attorney: Did you ever make any broad threats during those interviews?
Ed: That’s impossible.
Attorney: Did you try to arrange a public meeting with the Marshals?
Ed: Yes, several times.
Ed said that he had never pointed his rifle at the Marshals when they were unloading the pick up truck.
Ed: That’s impossible.
Ed said that the guns that had been removed at the time of the 2006 arrest was a modest collection (30 or so firearms), that he’d had the Goex cans of black powder for years, and that he hadn’t asked any of the supporters to purchase guns for him. Most of the guns belonged to other people and he didn’t touch other people’s guns.
He admitted building the pipebombs, the Goex grenades with nails, and the zip guns, but denied using the zip guns as booby trap devices. He thought the Tannerite baggies in the trees were “kind of benign”, the “safest way to do it without anyone getting hurt.”
He said he didn’t fire at anyone on June 7th because “no one put a gun in his face.”
Attorney: How id events that day change your life?
Ed: I had lost total faith and confidence that day in the US government. I had lost total faith and confidence in the local law enforcement. They were going to kill us.
Other than taking too fast, and the occasional foray into side issues like how the BOP was trying to kill him via his TB tests, Ed worked very well with his lawyer.
Cross examination wasn’t quite so congenial.
The prosecutor pointed out the US Constitution Ranger handbook refers to the group as a militia and asked Ed if they were trying to take the law into their own hands.
Ed’s first tantrum was over a very simple yes or no question about whether the Long Beach Navy Yard had hired Ed to kill their cockroaches. Ed didn’t want to say “no” he wanted to talk about how the government didn’t want to save 90%.
The Judge let the jury go for a few minutes and warned Ed that he need to answer the questions that were asked. Ed and his lawyer argued at the defense table where Ed complained, “He’s out to kill me, sir.”
Ed claimed that his tax bill from the first trial was $13,500,000 and that he’d paid it off with a promissory note. He held up the Uniform Commercial Code for the jury to see.
Prosecutor: Did you hide $100,000 in cash in the elevator shaft?
Oooh.
Ed said that his 60,000+ rounds of ammunition “is not much by today’s standards” and complained that the prosecution has been misinformed by the ADL if he thinks otherwise.
The prosecutor brought up Ed’s prior testimony about not touching other people’s guns and pointed out that Ed had violated that rule when he picked up the 50 caliber rifle on June 7th.
Ed: I’d have grabbed a spear, a flamethrower, a guided missile, or a nuclear bomb that night.
The prosecutor learned that Ed slept on the right side of the bed (where the baggie of hundreds was stored) and Elaine slept on the left (where the money bag held only ones.) Ed got pissed when the prosecutor asked if the pipe bomb closet was closer to Elaine’s side.
Ed then got in a fight with the judge:
Ed: This is a bogus trial. It’s professional courtesy that I’m even here. [He taps his beloved UCC book.]
He admitted that he placed the guns around the house and put the Tannerite in the trees, and while he said he held a rifle when “those bounty hunters” were unloading the truck, he denied pointing it at them.
Ed got excitable one last time, so the judge let the jury go home for the day, and gave Ed his final warning. He’d either behave himself and answer the questions or all of his testimony would be struck from the court record.
Ed sat down at the defense table and his two witnesses (Constitution Ranger Scott Dion and his wife) came in and took the Fifth. Ed has no other witnesses.
Cross examination will continue tomorrow.
Interesting bit:
- Free stater Kat Kanning was in the audience today. She refuses to stand for either the jury or the judge.
Topics: Daniel Riley, Ed Brown, Elaine Brown, Tax Deniers | 10 Comments »
July 8th, 2009 at 1:25 am
The person I feel the most for is Ed’s counsel – damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If Ed doesn’t take the stand, the prosecution goes unrebutted. Put ed on the stand and the prosecution can easily portray Ed as a violent, stupid, greedy little man. Either way Ed is toast – the really black, charred type. The flip side is that it has the potential to bode well for Elaine.
July 8th, 2009 at 2:16 am
Actually, I don’t think it is a matter of the prosecution doing anything other than letting Ed put the noose around his neck and then jump off the table. I am quite convinced Ed:Family Stupid is more than capable of sinking his own defense without any aid from the prosecution, which is why I think his attorney should have invested in heavy duty duct tape and used it liberally. His only hope is to go for sympathy and the stupid vote, and I’m not betting much on that. I think Ed has already handed the prosecution their case, all they need to do is keep him talking.
July 8th, 2009 at 7:19 am
Brown’s frustration escalated on Tuesday when Assistant U.S. Attorney Arnold Huftalen pressed Brown to give yes or no answers.
“I know what you’re trying to do and it’s not going to work with me,” Brown said. Singal ordered Brown to be quiet, but he refused. “Do you want the whole truth?” Brown asked repeatedly, yelling over Singal.
Singal sent the jury from courtroom and warned Brown that if he didn’t follow his orders, Brown would be removed and his testimony stricken from the record.
“The last judge did, why should you be any different,” said Brown.
After meeting with his attorney, Brown agreed to return to the stand, but it wasn’t long before Brown began objecting to the judge’s restrictions. Again, Singal ordered the jury from the courtroom, then looked down from the bench at Brown and told him it was his final chance.
A staredown ensued, until Brown reluctantly relented.
“If you allow me to give my full testimony as you said earlier about telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I will do everything you say,” Brown said.
But Singal adjourned for the day and told Brown’s lawyer, Michael Iacopino, he would give Iacopino an opportunity in the morning to convince him to allow Brown to continue testifying.
July 8th, 2009 at 7:28 am
The prosecution let Ed carry a red pen to the stand? Lord knows what might have happened if he had gotten a chance to use it.
July 8th, 2009 at 9:04 am
Perhaps he would have written “Refused for Cause” on the judge with his red pen.
July 8th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
In re Kat Kanning: The saying “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything” comes to mind.
July 8th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
I can imagine being in court and being badgered to answer even yes or no when either would be wrong. I think i would appeal to the judge, but probably with less belligerence than Ed. Albeit i might have something to say about the lawyer.
July 8th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
oops “even” should be “either”
July 8th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
frustration escalated
January 15th, 2010 at 2:04 am
Never mind…now I know what was in the elevator shaft.