Heartland terrorists want Trump fans on their jury

Leonard Pitts Jr.
Heartland terrorists want Trump fans on their jury
By Mary Sanchez, Tribune Content Agency on Dec 31, 2017


Call it the deplorables' defense.

Three men in Southwest Kansas who plotted to kill Muslims believe they cannot get a fair trial unless there are hardcore right-wingers on the jury.

Luckily, Curtis Wayne Allen, Patrick Eugene Stein and Gavin Wayne Wright were thwarted in their attempt to blow up an apartment complex and a mosque in Garden City, Kan., hoping to kill significant numbers of Somali immigrants.

They said their goal was a "bloodbath" to "wake people up" to the idea that the nation is being overrun by foreigners. The men referred to the Somali refugees as "cockroaches." They had stockpiled weapons and researched chemical explosives, with a plan to put them at the corners of the apartment building where Somali refugees live and worship.

The men discussed going door-to-door murdering and raping people, as well as arson and kidnapping. They also thought it a fine idea to target churches that had aided the refugees and people who had rented to them. One of the men swore that no Muslim child would be left alive.

They planned the attack for Nov. 9, 2016, the day after the election that put Donald Trump in the White House. They didn't want to cause any disruption in his quest for the presidency.

And now their defense team argues that the men's Sixth Amendment rights and the Jury Act will be violated if the jury pool isn't expanded beyond Wichita, where they are being tried, to where these three lived and hatched their plan, in rural western Kansas.

The rationale is laid out in the motion, citing Democrat and Republican voting patterns, noting that Southwest Kansas has higher percentages of Republican voters.

"This case is uniquely political because much of the anticipated evidence will center around, and was in reaction to, the 2016 presidential election," the defense lawyers wrote in the motion.

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