Assault case comes into focus
KEITH KINNAIRD | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 13 years, 7 months AGO
SANDPOINT - Court documents and police reports are painting a better picture in a peculiar Bonner County assault case.
Little was known about the circumstances surrounding an incident in which a Vay landowner used a John Deere tractor to dismantle a home on his property with a woman and two children still inside.
The episode resulted in three felony assault charges against Paul Fagerlie Finman, who faces trial in 1st District Court this fall.
Court documents and other records, meanwhile, reveal that Finman, 56, was entangled in a dispute with an adherent of the sovereign citizen movement named Alexander Duncan Campbell.
Finman inherited the entanglement with the property he purchased off Bandy Road in Vay. Campbell, his wife, son and daughter were living on a home on the ranch rent-free.
Eviction proceedings commenced after Finman said he received what he considered to be a death threat from Campbell veiled in Biblical verse. The defense maintains Finman was unaware Campbell's wife and children were inside when he began destroying the home to deter squatters.
Campbell, 66, was not at the home during the incident.
Campbell's children testified at a preliminary hearing that they feared for their lives during the ordeal, although his teenage daughter managed to find the time to document the destruction with a camera from within the home.
Campbell was also in repeated phone contact with his wife during the incident.
"They are just being herded by Mr. Campbell. They don't do anything independently of him," said Jeremy Featherston, Finman's Sandpoint defense attorney.
Campbell did not respond to a phone message seeking comment.
Featherston subpoenaed Campbell to testify at a preliminary hearing, but he dodged it by claiming he was improperly identified in the document.
The state has no interest in Campbell as a witness because he was not present when the home was being destroyed.
"He has absolutely zero to do with this case," said Deputy Prosecutor Shane Greenbank.
While charges are pending against Finman, Campbell is waging war with the justice system and evading arrest, according to court documents in Kootenai and Nez Perce counties.
He's charged in Kootenai County with carrying a concealed weapon without a permit, in addition to charges of failing to have a driver's license, vehicle registration or insurance. He's wanted on an arrest warrant from Nez Perce County for failing to appear on another driver's license charge.
Campbell's voluminous pro se filings in those matters bear all the hallmarks of sovereign citizen ideology - hyper-particular punctuation and capitalization, declarations that government is a racket and an abiding contempt for authority.
"With no legitimate governmental, judicial, or police authority, the current regimes at all levels rank no higher than a commune that depends for its existence on attracting voluntary members," Campbell said in a lengthy Aug. 25 filing.
Campbell, also known as Alexander-Duncan: Campbell, is seeking $65,000 an hour in damages dating back to his 2008 arrest in Nez Perce County. He's also trying to have his cases heard by the Washington Supreme Court.
The FBI rates sovereigns as domestic terrorists. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors antigovernment groups, said sovereigns use their complex belief systems to orchestrate financial scams, evade taxes and slip past all sorts of government regulation.
Last year, a father-son team of sovereigns murdered two police officers during a traffic stop in West Memphis, Ark., according to SLPC.
Bonner County's handling of the Finman case and Campbell has raised questions about the county's willingness to stand up to sovereigns. Some question how a respected businessman can be prosecuted while a sovereign citizen unabashedly defies authorities seemingly without repercussion.
Authorities in Kootenai County had no qualms about arresting Campbell last June for having a homemade license plate and a concealed 9-millimeter pistol with a round in the chamber and a full clip. But Finman said he had to "shame" a Bonner County sheriff's deputy into arresting Campbell on the active warrant out of Nez Perce County the day he was arrested for the alleged assaults.
"It was clear to me that the Bonner County Sheriff's Office was only targeting the honest Idaho taxpayer and landowner while protecting and enabling a sovereign citizen from out of state who does not acknowledge Idaho laws or the laws of the United States of America," Finman said in an email.
Greenbank disputes that Bonner County coddles sovereigns.
"Anybody who violates the law, we're going to treat it like any other case - whether you're a sovereign or not," said Greenbank.
Finman's five-day jury trial is set for next month. A defense motion to dismiss the case against him is pending.
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