It was senior recognition night at Jeanette Finicum’s daughter’s high school basketball game on Jan. 26, 2016, when Jeanette started hearing that something had happened to her husband, Robert “LaVoy” Finicum.
A Mohave County, Arizona, cattle rancher, father of 12, and foster parent, LaVoy Finicum was among a group of people who participated in a 41-day occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, 700 miles from his home. It started on Jan. 2, 2016. They were protesting federal land use policies—something LaVoy Finicum had been speaking about a lot on his YouTube channel, “One Cowboy’s Stand for Freedom.”
Jeanette had just visited him at Malheur and everything was fine. She was sure it still was until she went to the hallway to charge her phone and he didn’t answer when she called.
“I knew something was wrong because he promised that he would always pick up,” Jeanette Finicum told The Epoch Times.
Soon she received a call from Lisa Bundy, whose family lives on a ranch neighboring the Finicum’s ranch and whose husband, Ammon Bundy, had been following LaVoy’s vehicle from Malheur to a speaking engagement.
Shot in Back
But Lisa Bundy had terrible news.
“She is hysterical and screaming in the phone to me. ‘They shot and killed LaVoy! They shot and killed LaVoy!’ I dropped the phone and got hysterical.”
Jeanette’s brother-in-law was next to her. They held each other and cried.
“People were real quiet around us. They didn’t know what to say,” she recalled. “This is a small town here. [LaVoy’s] dad and mom were there at the basketball game. My other children were there. They paused the basketball game, had our family come down, and we were all informed—my children, his parents. The local police officer invited us to come across the street to the sheriff’s department to make phone calls to see if we could get any confirmation of any kind.”
The family tried to get answers from Oregon law enforcement.
“They refused to give us any information,” Jeanette said. “They were really rude, unkind, and would not offer even the police officers any information in reference to who was killed and who was wounded.”
No Warrant
Unmarked SUVs operated by an Oregon State Police SWAT team and an FBI Hostage Rescue Team prepared roadblocks for the two vehicles, while an FBI aircraft hovered overhead shooting video. Occupants in Finicum’s pickup also recorded video from inside the vehicle.
“[The government] wanted a swift resolution to the problem at Malheur. People were starting to listen to them. Their gatherings were becoming 200, 300, 400 people,” Jeanette Finicum said.
LaVoy became a natural spokesman for the group because he was able to communicate in a clear style that resonated with people.
“They would have been talking about the Constitution, property rights, liberty and to stand up, because they were in an area where there were a lot of ranchers, and they were all similarly being affected by the overreach of the government that was happening there.”
Finicum was not at Malheur when he encountered law enforcement. The roadblock was an hour away.
Driving in the first vehicle, Finicum stopped at the first roadblock where state police pointed guns with red lasers at him. He stayed in his truck.
“I’m going over to meet the sheriff in Grant County. Come along with us, and we can talk about this over there,” Finicum told law enforcement in a video recorded by passenger Ryan Bundy. “You can go ahead and shoot me. Put the laser right there. Put the bullet through the head. OK boys? It’s going to get real. You want my blood on your hands? Get it done. Because we’ve got people to see and places to go.”
There was no arrest warrant and no probable cause to arrest, according to attorney Roger Root, who is handling a wrongful death case for the Finicum family.
“They just claimed they were doing a felony stop. Under the Fourth Amendment, which is the right of the people to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures, including seizures of a person, there’s no such thing in the law as a felony stop,” Root told The Epoch Times. “They need probable cause to believe a particular crime is committed by a particular person.”
Finicum and his passengers considered calling someone for help, but 20 miles from town, there was no cellphone signal. Finicum figured the sheriff they were meeting was about 50 miles away.
He sped away from the first roadblock. But around a curve, another roadblock was waiting, with law enforcement standing in front of vehicles. He tried to drive around it and got stuck in the deep snow on the side of the road.
Shortly after, he got out of the vehicle and walked through deep snow with his hands up.
The next part of the video is a matter of controversy. His hands went down and instantly, he was shot in the back and fell to the ground.
It is unclear why Finicum’s hands went down. He may have been trying to balance his steps in the deep snow or motion to police. Law enforcement say he was going for a gun they found in his pocket. But he always kept his gun in his holster unless he was driving. Then it was kept under a blanket on the dashboard, Jeanette Finicum said. She believes the gun could have been planted on him after the shooting.
The Epoch Times requested comment from the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Department of Justice, Oregon State Police, Deschutes County Major Incident Team, and the Harney County District Attorney’s Office.
Supreme Court Next
In 2018, the Finicum family brought a wrongful death lawsuit against the Oregon State Police, the FBI, and the Bureau of Land Management. The family says Finicum was ambushed and killed because he had been speaking against the government.
But it is difficult to litigate against the government in its own courts.
“The case languished in the trial court for over three years because there were so many savage motions to dismiss by all these agencies,” said Root, who took the case from previous attorneys. “Basically, the lawyers for the Finicums were forced to just constantly respond to these motions to dismiss to try to keep the case alive. And it was a brutal, brutal defense by the state of Oregon, the FBI, and the U.S. Justice Department—some of the top lawyers for these government agencies. It never got to depositions. There never was much discovery.”
Ultimately. the judge dismissed the case, essentially saying the plaintiffs were not working hard enough to move the case forward.
“Failure to prosecute,” Root said. “All these questions about shooting a guy in the back, or having his hands in the air, have never been resolved.”
The family will now ask the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the case and expects, in the next 60 days, to file a request to be heard.
It is important, Jeanette Finicum said, for the facts of her husband’s death to be understood.
“If they can make this go away to where the American people don’t ever hear the truth about this story, then they have won the media, they’ve won the narrative, they’ve won on so many other levels,” Finicum said. “It’s not about money for our family. It’s about the truth coming out and having LaVoy’s good name protected. That’s what’s so hard, because we’re up against this giant media propaganda machine, not to mention the government, the FBI, and the deep state within it.”
Media reports have labeled Finicum a racist, militia member, extremist, and terrorist. None of that was true, Jeanette Finicum said.
Constitution and God His Guide
The ranch of LaVoy Finicum’s neighbor, Cliven Bundy, was the scene of a 2014 dispute with the Bureau of Land Management over cattle grazing rights. Finicum and other ranchers showed support for Bundy. When the situation was resolved, Finicum started a YouTube channel talking about constitutional rights and land rights.
“It’s easy to see that our government has eviscerated the Constitution. They are a lawless government, unwilling to be governed by the supreme law of the land, by the laws that ‘We the People’ placed upon them. And so what do we do?” Finicum said in a 2014 video. “This thing isn’t going to be solved legislatively. It’s too far gone. And there’s too few politicians with real conviction, with real courage. The establishment is too firmly entrenched.”
He wondered how citizens should respond and, through study, Finicum determined that God intended man to be free.
“When a man stands for freedom, he stands with God. And as long as he stands for freedom, he stands with God; even if he stands alone, he still stands with God,” Finicum said in 2014. “I think there’s about 50 million Americans out there that love freedom as much as I do. They’re willing to put their lives on the line—their fortunes, their sacred honor—as our Founding Fathers did in the beginning. Because the conflict is building, the storm clouds are gathering over this very same issue: will man be free or must he be coerced?”
He said people should still fight for freedom using the legislative and judicial avenues.
“But we know when our natural rights are being violated, when we are being trampled upon, it’s time for us to say, ‘No more,’” Finicum said.
He advocated for banding together and speaking up.
“If your property rights are being violated, I’ll come stand with you,” Finicum said. “I know there’s 50 million of us, willing to stand together and say, ‘No. Leave his property alone.’ No aggression. No hate—willing to stand and willing to defend by all means necessary, to say leave us alone. Don’t bother us. Let us raise our family. Let us enjoy this land upon which we live. Let us be free to make our own choices. It’s a great land. I’m going to live as a free man. I invite you, too, to stand up and defend the Constitution, and the rights that are guarded by this document. Stand for freedom. Stand for the Constitution.”
“You know, you don’t even understand until it becomes personal. But it has become very personal for a lot of people throughout this country in 2022, has it not?” Jeanette Finicum said.
She was troubled when she heard about the FBI investigating parents speaking at school board meetings, innocent individuals, she says, who are peacefully standing up for the rights of their children.
She was also troubled when Antifa and Black Lives Matter emerged, protesting violently in the streets.
“These people that had contention, they wanted to talk to their government, and they were going about it very violently,” Jeanette Finicum said. “And in contrast to the people that were in Malheur, they weren’t violent, they were peaceful. They were trying to have their voices heard in a peaceful way. And the treatment of them, versus what happened to my husband, which resulted in his death, it angered me and I was frustrated with the government. Why is there a double standard for the subject matter? Everyone in this country is entitled to their due process. Why is it that it is okay for a whole community to completely destroy itself and be hailed heroes for doing it?”
Until it happens to you, you don’t understand the depth of the corruption and how isolated you feel as an American citizen in this free country, she said.
“It’s going to take a lot of us to continue to stand up; that’s what my husband would say. He said it doesn’t matter how it ends, it matters how you stand. And so we have to keep standing and keep fighting in respectful, responsible ways, like my husband was trying to do,” Jeanette Finicum said. “He was not anti-government. He was not a militia member. He was pro responsible, limited government. He was standing for the Constitution and for our right to have that First Amendment right to speak, and the Second Amendment right to carry while speaking and doing it responsibly.”
“We’ve watched other protests where that very same thing happened and no roadblock was set up. Nobody was shot three times in the back after being fired upon six separate times before being murdered. You watch those cases throughout the country where maybe there’s been police brutality, and they have every right to stand up for that brutality and to demand justice,” she said. “But their cases are handled swiftly and with resolve. We’ve had to fight, travel the country, and try to get anybody to listen to us, and to raise the funds to continue to move forward. It’s been a very long, hard journey.”
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