A Cochise County prosecutor said he will consider filing criminal charges against a rancher who confronted a group of hunters with an assault-style rifle after a civil jury found in favor of the hunters.
A jury in Bisbee on Nov. 22 ordered rancher Roger Barnett to pay $98,000 to two men and three girls he confronted on Oct. 30, 2004, while they hunted deer on his leased grazing land. Mr. Barnett is an anti-illegal immigration activist who claims to have detained more than 10,000 migrants in the past 10 years and turned them over to the U.S. Border Patrol.
The hunters accused Barnett of threatening to shoot them with an AR-15 rifle and of using racial slurs, but he testified that he only took out the weapon because the men were armed and denied using racial comments. The jury found the two men partly responsible because they trespassed.
“It’s obvious that the civil jury saw something,” about Mr. Barnett’s actions, Cochise County Attorney Ed Rheinheimer said. “And so we’re going to take a good look at the jury’s findings.”
The jury’s trespassing finding also “plays quite prominently” in determining if Mr. Barnett acted criminally, Mr. Rheinheimer said. Arizona law allows property owners to threaten deadly force when confronting trespassers.
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