BOISE, idaho — In March, a six-person jury found far-right leader Ammon Bundy guilty of two misdemeanors — one a trespassing charge — related to incidents at the Idaho Capitol. But the jury wasn’t able to make a decision on the other trespassing count.
That final charge has now been dismissed.
Ada County Deputy Prosecutor Whitney Welsh asked Ada County Magistrate Judge Kira Dale for the dismissal Monday during a hearing. Welsh said “another finding of guilt would add little additional consequence” for Bundy, a gubernatorial candidate running as an independent after exiting the Republican primary.
Welsh said that despite the dismissal, “the state is confident that we would prevail” in getting Bundy convicted.
On March 16, Bundy was found guilty of trespassing as a second offense within five years and one count of resisting or obstructing officers’ arrests and seizures. Dale sentenced Bundy to one year of unsupervised probation, as long as he doesn’t commit a new crime in a year’s time. He also was fined $3,315.
The charges stemmed from April 2021 incidents in which Bundy was arrested twice in one day for being at the Capitol while under a one-year ban from the building. That ban resulted from his August 2020 arrest for refusing to leave the Lincoln Auditorium at the Capitol during a special legislative session. He was convicted in July 2021 on charges related to that.
Bundy appeared Monday via the Ada County Jail for the virtual hearing on the dismissal. He is serving a 10-day sentence after an Ada County judge on Thursday found him guilty of being in contempt of court for refusing to complete 40 hours of community service related to last July’s conviction.
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