Nevada Bundy Prosecution Collapses

Here, in the biggest case in the country, with the prosecution spending untold millions of dollars and the judge imposing rules of evidence which almost choked the defense from speaking, the Justice Department was unable to get convictions.

The Federal Government Spent a Quarter-Billion Dollars
but Couldn’t Convict the Bundys of a Single Crime

By Roger I. Roots, J.D., Ph.D.

January 12, 2018

In 2013 the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) obtained federal court orders authorizing the agency to “seize and remove to impound” hundreds of Cliven Bundy’s cattle on the public ranges around Bunkerville, Nevada.   The agency interpreted these court orders broadly, and descended on the area in April 2014 with some 200 body-armor-wearing agents, semiautomatic weapons, sniper teams, undercover informants, and surveillance cameras aimed at the Bundy residence.

The BLM brought more than corrals and horse trailers.  They brought backhoes, dump trucks and earth-moving equipment to tear up water lines and other infrastructure that had been built by Bundy and his ancestors over decades.  Defying county officials, the federal officers chose calving season—the very time when cows and newborn calves are most physically weak and vulnerable—to execute the court orders.  They orchestrated a paramilitarized roundup operation using helicopters to terrify the cattle into stampeding to the point of exhaustion in extreme heat. At least 40 cows either died from the ordeal or were shot by BLM employees and contractors.

The Feds even used the impoundment order to establish “First Amendment Zones” limiting freedom of speech in a 600,000-acre area to two small isolated parcels in the desert.  It was almost certainly the largest infringement of First Amendment rights (by area) in American history.

When Bundy’s son Dave stopped on a state highway to photograph BLM snipers on local hillsides, BLM agents threw him down, ground his face into asphalt and falsely arrested him.  And when other family members stopped a BLM dump truck to inquire if the truck was carrying dead cows, BLM agents erupted in a flurry of violence.

In response, hundreds of citizens journeyed from all over the country to protest the BLM operation.  A few were armed.  Political officials from across the west denounced the BLM’s heavy-handedness.  As a direct result of the national outcry, the BLM halted their cattle impoundment.   And on April 12, 2014, the BLM agents withdrew from the area—seemingly at the direction of the U.S. Attorneys office.  It was apparently the plan of the Justice Department to entrap the Bundys into a criminal case by constructing a narrative that Bundy supporters “extorted” the cattle from the BLM by threats and “assaults” on federal officers.  (The corralled cattle would have died had not Bundy family members released them back onto the range.)

Federal prosecutors spent tens of millions to build an elaborate criminal case designed to imprison Bundy and his sons and supporters for life.  For two years, more than a thousand FBI agents combed through Facebook comments, posed as supporters or journalists, or surfed the internet to concoct a case against the Bundys.

Meanwhile Bundy’s sons Ammon and Ryan became active in protests against the government’s mistreatment of the Hammond family in eastern Oregon.  In January 2016 protesters occupied Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in a month-long demonstration.

Again the FBI spent millions in a show of force against the “domestic terrorists.”  The entire town of Burns, Oregon—30 miles from the Refuge occupation—was fortified with razor wire, chain-link fences and concrete barriers.  Military hardware rolled through the streets and buzzed overhead.  Undercover informants dressed as rednecks in pickups harassed the populace.  At a January 26, 2016 roadblock ambush, FBI and Oregon State Police opened fire on Ryan Bundy and shot 54-year-old LaVoy Finicum in the back as he stood surrounded in a roadside snowbank.

Leftist or socialist demonstrators would likely have been charged with misdemeanors over the Refuge occupation; but government officials viewed the 2016 “armed takeover” as an affront to all that government stands for.  Federal prosecutors alleged that the protesters had launched a conspiracy to impede federal officials from performing their jobs.

The Most Elaborate Prosecutions In American History

In their zeal to destroy the Bundy “movement,” teams of federal prosecutors launched the most elaborate federal criminal cases in American history.  Ammon and Ryan Bundy, militia spokesman Ryan Payne, and others were flown back-and-forth between Oregon and Nevada to face hearings in two, simultaneous criminal cases.  Jurors in both jurisdictions were bussed (supposedly for their safety) from secret locations every day.  In Nevada, not one but two helicopters followed overhead while defendants were transported between prison and court daily.  In all, the federal government has likely spent a quarter of a billion dollars reacting to, imprisoning, and prosecuting the Bundys and their fellow protesters.

In October 2016, jurors in Portland acquitted the Oregon defendants in the “trial of the century.”  U.S. marshals tackled and tased Ammon Bundy’s attorney in the courtroom.   Ammon and Ryan Bundy were denied release and transported to a Nevada prison to face the Nevada indictment along with Cliven, brothers Dave and Mel and a dozen others (while a half-dozen others awaited a second trial in Oregon).

Todd Engel

The Oregon ‘not-guilty’ verdicts gave hope to two-dozen other defendants, who mostly stuck to their guns (no pun intended) and refused to plead guilty or negotiate with prosecutors.  Courts were forced to split the Oregon case into 2 trial groups and the Nevada case into 3 trial groups.  The first Nevada trial (of “gunmen”), commenced in February 2017 with Eric Parker, Scott Drexler, Greg Burleson, Steve Stewart, Todd Engel and Rick Lovelien facing multiple serious charges.  Jurors couldn’t agree on most counts but convicted Engel and Burleson (mostly based on Facebook comments) of some accusations.  Burleson was sentenced to 68 years in prison.

Then came one of the most disgraceful “trials” in U.S. history.  Parker, Drexler, Stewart and Lovelien were retried in Las Vegas in August 2017.  The prosecution exploited every possible advantage, winning rulings from the judge which barred the defendants from even mentioning most of their possible defenses.  (They couldn’t even say that the BLM was overbearing or heavily armed, or even that there were government snipers above them.)  Jurors were treated to a one-sided display of 2014 photos showing the men with guns while overlooking BLM officers from a bridge on Interstate 15.  BLM witnesses—either exaggerating or lying—cried in the courtroom while claiming they saw the defendants pointing rifles at them.  (Not a single photo or video corroborates this—and there were hundreds of cameras recording almost everything at the time; there were even Nevada trooper dashcams capturing 80 percent of the movements of the defendants during the period.)

The judge even ordered Eric Parker off the witness stand for saying he looked “up and to the right” during the 2014 “standoff.”  Prosecutors strenuously objected (in a sidebar hearing) that such a statement might tell jurors that there were BLM snipers on a mesa above; and thus Parker was unable to rebut the government’s claim that he aimed his rifle down-and-to-the-left at a crying BLM agent (who was photographed very-much-not-crying at the time).

Defense lawyers were so stifled by the judge’s orders that they opted not to even make closing arguments—a gutsy move almost without precedent.  It was a cry for help to the jury.  And the jury heard it loud and clear.  On August 22, 2017, the jury fully acquitted Stewart and Lovelien, and acquitted Parker and Drexler of most counts.  (They hung on a small number of charges for the two men.)

The not-guilty verdicts sent shockwaves throughout the Judiciary and the Justice Department.  Here, in the biggest case in the country, with the prosecution spending untold millions of dollars and the judge imposing rules of evidence which almost choked the defense from speaking, the Justice Department was unable to get convictions.

When the “big trial” (involving Cliven, Ryan, Ammon, and Ryan Payne) began in October 2017, defense attorneys demanded to see evidence that had been withheld by the prosecution.  There were pictures (but no explanations) of immense piles of shredded documents left by the BLM at the scene in 2014.  And Ryan Bundy remembered surveillance cameras pointed at the Bundy house in 2014 yet Bundy had never been provided with the footage.

Prosecutors insisted they possessed no such evidence.  Even if there was a surveillance camera here or there it hadn’t recorded anything.  But such questions seemed to produce more startling disclosures.  Ultimately it was revealed that there had been an elaborate FBI surveillance operation which had been concealed from the defense.  And it seemed that prosecutors had been coaching witnesses to change their reports to censor out inconvenient facts.

By the third week of trial in November, Chief Judge Gloria Navarro—the very judge who had given prosecutors everything they wished for in the previous two trials—was visibly weary of the DOJ’s barbarous tactics.  A mistrial was declared just prior to Christmas, and all defendants except Cliven were released on conditions while lawyers argued over whether the case warranted another trial.  And on Monday, January 8, 2018, in a packed courtroom in Las Vegas, the Judge granted Ryan Payne’s motion to dismiss.  A “universal sense of justice has been violated,” proclaimed Navarro.   The judge said further that she was unaware of a more egregious case of FBI misconduct.

It should be noted that there are currently a half-dozen additional pending motions to dismiss, citing even graver prosecutorial misconduct.   It has recently come to light that lead prosecutor Steven Myhre was approached during the first Nevada trial by a government case investigator who informed the prosecutor that he was breaking the law by withholding evidence from the defense.  Myhre’s response, according to some reports, was to fire the agent and order him to keep quiet.  Even as Cliven Bundy was released from jail after serving 700 days, the case continues for others.   Stay tuned!

Cliven Bundy Family (photo credit: Morgan Philpot)

Dr. Roger Roots is an attorney for Cliven Bundy in two pending civil cases and has worked on both the Ryan Bundy defense team in Oregon and the Cliven Bundy defense team in Nevada. Roger is the only lawyer who observed all four Bundy trials beginning in October 2016. (He missed seeing only the second Oregon trial in February 2017 because it conflicted with the first Nevada trial.) Roger is also a founder of Lysander Spooner University, and author of The Conviction Factory: The Collapse of America’s Criminal Courts.

This is an updated article that was first published at LewRockwell.com

Featured photo: Roger Roots shares his photo, taken January 9th. The Cliven Bundy defense team included attorneys Bret Whipple and Larry Klayman.

Redoubt News

 

 

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GOVT Duplicity Revealed in Bunkerville Trial

THE PROSECUTION IS SAYING THAT THEY MAY NOT HAVE TURNED OVER REQUIRED EVIDENCE TO THE DEFENSE!

The existence of this information has been repeatedly
and falsely denied by prosecutors in proffers and offers of proof
to the Court and to the defense.

By Shari Dovale   7/15/2017

In a motion for mistrial filed late on Tuesday, Nov 14^th, defense attorneys revealed a Bombshell that the prosecution has LIED again!

The charges against Cliven Bundy, and the other defendants, include in part the false messaging the government claims was used to attract supporters to Bunkerville in 2014.

The government stated that the social media messaging put out by the Bundys that “now they have our house surrounded” was false and misleading. This has been a key point in the government’s case against these defendants.

However, in their multiple super-secret sealed hearings on evidence, it has been revealed that the government has known all along that their narrative is untrue and false! The previously hidden information, disclosed just this week, is that the statements of Mr. Bundy were precisely true.

Read the motion here.

What the prosecution have been attempting to hide from the world, and the defense, is that an army of 20+ fully armed BLM officers with AR-15 assault rifles and FBI SWAT with “snipers” had set up a Forward Operating Base less than two miles from the Bundy Ranch home – beginning April 5 (before the Dave Bundy arrest).

This is significant as the prosecution claims that Dave’s arrest was a catalyst to project the “false messaging”. The government argued that after the “arrest of Dave Bundy” the “message changed” and the social media messages escalated to “they have got my boys” and they have “snipers” pointing at us.

What About The Cameras?

It has now been disclosed that the cameras were set up and live streamed to anyone that was given access to the camera’s internet IP address. Additionally, the defense has only just learned the names of never-before disclosed witnesses who viewed the live video surveillance feed from these cameras.

The prosecution has already been caught lying to the defense and the court. Just this week, Daniel Scheiss stated that Ryan Bundy was belligerent and defiant to law enforcement at a cattle auction in Utah and required tasing before being arrested. That was proved to be false, resulting in Ryan’s release from pre-trial detention.

The prosecution requested a continuance before opening arguments commenced. The motion states:

“…the government further explained, after making an oral motion for continuance, that additional grounds for the requested continuance included the government’s need to review government emails not in the prosecution team’s possession, and also – and this is exceptionally significant – the need of the government, based upon allegations made in Ammon Bundy’s prior motion, to re-review the materials that it has not already produced to the defense, meaning material in its possession that it has previously “suppressed”, to ensure that it has complied with its obligations to do so. “

The prosecution is saying that they may not have turned over required evidence to the defense! Again they are caught being underhanded and deceitful, yet Judge Gloria Navarro has not even sanctioned them, let alone dismissing the case as she should!

Add this to the revelations that the prosecution was in Bunkerville on April 3^rd, prior to even these events. Did the US Attorney’s office coordinate what needed to happen during the coming days? Did they call the shots to put the snipers in place? What exactly was their role, since the US Attorney should not have been there at all?

If Judge Navarro wants to retain even a smidgeon of credibility, she will dismiss this case immediately. She has already proven herself to be biased, yet she seems to want to correct that image. Will she do the right thing?

Redoubt News

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Prosecutors Seek Sanctions Against Steven Stewart’s Attorney – Bunkerville Retrial

The U.S. Justice Department is pulling no punches in the “Bunkerville Retrial” of Eric Parker, Steven Stewart, Scott Drexler and Rick Lovelein currently underway in a federal courtroom in Las Vegas, Nevada.

During morning arguments on Tuesday, July 25, 2017, Acting U.S. Attorney Steven Myhre demanded that Judge Gloria Navarro impose sanction and punishment on the defense team, especially Steven Stewart’s court-appointed attorney Richard Tanasi.  Prosecutors argued that Tanasi crossed a line during questioning of a witness the day before.

With the jury outside the courtroom, and the audience barely in their seats, Myrhe accused Tanasi of knowingly violating an ‘order in limine’ which prohibits the defense from mentioning forbidden topics.  The day before, while questioning a witness named Trey Schillie, Tanasi had asked if Schillie feared being shot by Bureau of Land Management (BLM) agents.  The topic of BLM conduct is strictly off limits according to an order imposed by the Judge just before the start of trial.

Trey Schillie, a tourist on vacation (who happened to be employed by the U.S. Forest Service in Colorado) was driving on I-15 northbound on April 12, 2014 when he found himself in the heart of the famed “Bundy standoff” that day.  Schillie parked his car on the roadside and walked over to see what was happening.  He took several now-famous photographs of the protesters in the wash below the bridge, and of the crowd on top of the northbound bridge.  Among his photos was one of Defendant Eric Parker prone on the bridge with a rifle positioned in a crack between the bridge’s concrete barriers.

At the end of his direct testimony and cross-examination, the jurors asked a series of questions of Schillie, and Schillie responded that he felt fear while standing on the bridge taking pictures.  This left an obvious question that badly needed to be resolved: did Schillie feel fear from the protesters surrounding him on the bridge or from the armed BLM agents aiming weapons in his direction down below?  The photos show several people (not just Parker) in crouching positions behind the concrete, indicating a fear on the bridge that federal agents might open fire on them.

Attorney Tanasi was virtually compelled to ask the obvious question of Mr. Schillie.  Tanasi sought to pin down the witness, first asking if Schillie saw anyone on the bridge pointing weapons at him.  Then Tanasi asked Schillie to affirm that the BLM agents at a distance in the Wash below were pointing weapons in his direction.  The prosecution objected immediately, and Schillie never answered.

Trial continued with another witness on the afternoon of the 24^th.  But Tanasi’s ‘source-of-fear’ question was the focus of the prosecution the following morning.  Prosecutor Myrhe demanded that Tanasi be punished for asking a forbidden question.  Judge Navarro asked Myrhe what punishment he would recommend, and Myrhe responded that the defense (not just Tanasi but all the defense lawyers) should be made to disclose to the prosecution their closing arguments.  The prosecution also demanded an instruction to the jury that BLM conduct is not an issue in the trial.

From Redoubt News

Photo: “Militia men surrounding the ranch of Cliven Bundy gather at the back of a parked pickup truck in Bunkerville, Nevada May 3, 2014.” (Reuters)

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Sheriff Arpaio on Trial: Prosecution or Persecution?

“With over 55 years of law enforcement experience, Sheriff Arpaio has always followed and enforced the laws on the books. Now, the DOJ wants to put him in prison for enforcing the very laws he swore an oath to uphold,” Mr. Fotis said in a Monday statement.

Washington Times

Arizona’s Joe Arpaio, once known as “America’s toughest sheriff,” was back Monday where he has long been most at home — in the spotlight — although not for the reasons he would have preferred.

Months after losing his re-election bid, the 85-year-old former Maricopa County sheriff went on trial in Phoenix on misdemeanor criminal contempt-of-court charges, a case his foes have praised as long overdue and fans have denounced as a “political prosecution.”

Federal prosecutors argued that Mr. Arpaio willfully disobeyed a 2011 injunction barring him from enforcing federal immigration laws by detaining 170 suspected illegal aliens from December 2011 to May 2013.

After U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement refused to accept the suspects in 2012, the sheriff’s office tried a workaround by taking them to Border Patrol.

“He thought he could get away with it,” prosecutor Victor Salgado said in his opening argument, according to ABC15. “He never thought this day would come.”

Defense attorney Jack Wilenchik called the prosecution of Mr. Arpaio “shameful and outrageous,” as reported by the Phoenix New Times.

Mr. Arpaio became a national figure during his 24 years as sheriff with headline-grabbing moves such as requiring prisoners to wear pink underwear and erecting a tent city for offenders.

The trial has gained national attention with the defense’s attempt to call Attorney General Jeff Sessions as a witness, which the Justice Department has resisted, saying Mr. Sessions was a senator during the relevant period and that the defense has failed to show extraordinary circumstances.

The proceedings, playing out before a packed courtroom, began on Monday with a victory for the prosecution: Hours beforehand, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Mr. Arpaio’s request for a jury trial.

Instead, the former lawman will have his fate decided by U.S. District Court Judge Susan R. Bolton, a Clinton appointee, in a trial expected to last eight days. If found guilty, Mr. Arpaio faces a maximum six months in jail.

The prosecution called former Arpaio counsel Tim Casey, who said he told the sheriff that he must either arrest detainees on state charges or release them, instead of detaining them solely on suspicion of being in the country illegally.

Mr. Casey said he told the sheriff and his subordinates, “Arrest or release. Those are the options,” The Arizona Republic reported.

Opinion on the case is sharply divided. James Fotis, president of the National Center for Police Defense, accused the Justice Department of “deep state bias,” noting that prosecutors filed the charges two weeks before the Nov. 8 election.

“With over 55 years of law enforcement experience, Sheriff Arpaio has always followed and enforced the laws on the books. Now, the DOJ wants to put him in prison for enforcing the very laws he swore an oath to uphold,” Mr. Fotis said in a Monday statement.

Read more at gopusa:  http://www.gopusa.com/sheriff-arpaio-on-trial-prosecution-or-persecution/

H/T: JK

Spain Charges Its Central Bankers: “Six Current and Former Directors of the Bank of Spain Testify”

This article was written by Claire Bernish and originally published at The Free Thought Project.

Editor’s Comment: If this would ever take hold in the U.S., then maybe we could get somewhere. Even now, Europe remains on the verge of breaking down, and many of the worst vulnerabilities for Spain, Italy, Ireland, Greece and other nations at risk of default were created by the central bankers. Unwinding the ball of yarn will not be easy, and institutional excuses will likely be dished out like candy. Yet, putting a foot down and sending the message may remind bankers in countries everywhere to think twice before swindling their populations. Iceland did it, and much of their financial problems of entanglement and institutional risk were sorted out.

The signal at home in America remains: you are above the law, a god over the little people, and too smart and too well-connected to ever be held into account. That signal is long overdue for a change… from Goldman Sachs on down through every major megabank. Otherwise, we are playing with fire, and it can all too easily happen again.

Spain Sets Massive Precedent — Charges Its Central Bankers in Court

by Claire Bernish

First, Iceland, and now Spain has taken on the Big Bankers responsible for financial calamity, as the country’s highest national court charged the former head of Spain’s central bank, a market regulator, and five other banking officials over a failed bank leading to the loss of millions of euros for smaller investors.

This, of course, markedly departs from the mammoth taxpayer giveaway — commonly referred to as the bailout — approved by the U.S. government ostensibly to “save” the Big Banks and, albeit unstated, allow the enormous institutions to continue bilking customers without the slightest fear of penalty.

Errant bankers and financiers, it would seem, typically manage to either evade actually being charged, or escape hefty fines and time behind bars.

Spain’s Supreme Court last year ruled “serious inaccuracies” in information about the listing led investors to back Bankia in error, thus the bank has since paid out millions of euros in compensation.

But Spanish authorities could not abide the telling findings of a years-long investigation into the failed listing, as Wolf Street explains,

As part of the epic, multi-year criminal investigation into the doomed IPO of Spain’s frankenbank Bankia – which had been assembled from the festering corpses of seven already defunct saving banks – Spain’s national court called to testify six current and former directors of the Bank of Spain, including its former governor, Miguel Ángel Fernández Ordóñez, and its former deputy governor (and current head of the Bank of International Settlements’ Financial Stability Institute), Fernando Restoy. It also summoned for questioning Julio Segura, the former president of Spain’s financial markets regulator, the CNMV [National Securities Market Commission] (the Spanish equivalent of the SEC in the US).

The six central bankers and one financial regulator stand accused of authorizing the public launch of Bankia in 2011 despite repeated warnings from the Bank of Spain’s own team of inspectors that the banking group was ‘unviable.’

As AFP reports, “The National Court validated conclusions made by prosecutors who concluded that when ‘an unviable entity has been listed on the stock market, its administrators or auditor should not shoulder all the responsibility.’”

Specifics of the charges have not yet been made apparent, but as The Economist reports:

The court is questioning why they allowed Bankia to sell shares in an initial public offering in 2011, less than a year before Bankia’s portfolio of bad mortgage loans forced the government to seize control of it. It said there was evidence the regulators had ‘full and thorough knowledge’ of Bankia’s plight. After its nationalisation, it went on to report a €19.2bn ($24.7bn) loss for 2012, the largest in Spanish corporate history.

Internal emails and documents played a crucial role in ultimately bringing the central banking officials to task for the failure of Bankia — inspectors bringing issues to the attention of superiors were allegedly ignored. One email cited by The Economist came from an inspector who warned Bankia was “a money-losing machine,” for which an IPO would not solve.

Another report, deemed “devastating by the court,” saw an inspector advise Bankia to seek a private buyer rather than proceed with the listing.

An inquiry into “the participation of other players, such as officials in the central bank,” was also urged by the National Court.

As The Economist points out, Spanish judges are generally reluctant to sentence first-time financial criminals to prison; though five Novacaixagalicia executives had five-year suspended sentences — levied for embezzlement in 2015 — abruptly enforced in January.

Meanwhile, taxpayers in the United States have yet to see Big Bankers criminally responsible for the financial ruin of so many Americans brought to any semblance of justice for their wrongdoing.

This article was written by Claire Bernish and originally published at The Free Thought Project.

Anti-Vaccination Nurses In Australia Will Now Face Prosecution

By: Alexa Erickson, Collective-Evolution |

Vaccinations have long been a controversial talking point. We are told that in order to achieve and maintain good health, we must get vaccinated, but not everyone accepts this view.

In fact, many nurses and midwives, for instance, choose to promote anti-vaccination on social media or in person, saying vaccines are neither necessary nor even advisable. But now the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia is warning that those who do this could face prosecution. The board urges the public to report any instances of people spreading “misleading and deceptive” materials.

“With no exceptions we expect all registered nurses, enrolled nurses and midwives to use the best available evidence in making practice decisions. This includes providing information to the public about public health issues,” announced Chair of the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) Dr. Lynette Cusack.

The new stance is the result of reports that a “small number” of practitioners have been spreading anti-vaccination views on social media.

“Midwives and nurses are highly regarded and trusted members of society and people take their advice very seriously,” noted Hannah Dahlen, a professor of midwifery at the University of Western Sydney and the spokeswoman for the Australian College of Midwives. “I agree that they have a very serious obligation to provide the best available evidence, and it is of course concerning that some are taking to social media in order to express a position not backed by science.”

New regulations call for all reports of anti-vaccination promotions to be investigated thoroughly. And if the nurse or midwife in question is found to be breaking their professional obligation to support scientifically-backed health advice, their ability to practice medicine fully could be impeded. The most serious cases could result in harsher penalties, like having their registration suspended or even cancelled altogether.

“The NMBA is taking this opportunity to make its expectations about providing advice on vaccinations clear to registered nurses, enrolled nurses and midwives,” said the organization.

The new regulations follow Australia’a newly appointed “No Jab, No Pay” law that came into effect on January 1st, 2016. Under this policy, you can “conscientiously object” to vaccinating your child due to philosophical, religious, or “I read things on the Internet” reasons. However, doing so allows the government to withhold family payments of up to $15,000 each year.

Not all parents agree with the no jab law, however. Dr. Judy Wilyman, who has studied the vaccination topic since 1993 (when she immunized her first child), says that the “injection of substances into the human body is an individual’s choice and if people are being refused jobs, welfare benefits or places in schools then this discrimination is infringing on our human right to choose what we inject into our own bodies – our right to bodily integrity.” She also noted that when she tried to debate her academic research, media outlets decided “not report the other side of the vaccination debate.” She claimed to be attacked by consumer lobby groups and that “media censorship” on the issue has prevented “proper debate of this health issue in Australia.”

Australia’s vaccination rates are currently at their highest. Australian Medical Association President Michael Gannon reported that 6,000 children of parents registered as conscientious objectors to vaccination are now completely immunized.

The WHO says vaccinations prevent up to 3 million deaths annually from diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, and measles. The organization also claims an additional 1.5 million deaths could be avoided if global vaccination coverages improves.

The biggest concern regarding the enforced punishments of anti-science messaging from healthcare professions is the worry the movement will simply retreat further underground.

“The worry is the confirmation bias that can occur, because people might say: ‘There you go, this is proof that you can’t even have an alternative opinion.’ It might in fact just give people more fuel for their belief systems,” Devlin noted.