A Victory for the Law of Self Defense, Conclusion

As described by Dr. Ron Martinelli, a criminologist who worked pro bono for the Kelly defense team, “the state has already spent upwards of $1 million in pursuit of this [case] drawing from taxpayer dollars in the state’s poorest county in an area situated along the U.S.-Mexico border.”

What is surprising is how Kelly came to be charged in the matter, and why he was prosecuted for an action which could have been justified under Arizona’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which states that “(a) person or his agent in lawful possession or control of premises is justified in threatening to use deadly physical force or in threatening or using physical force against another when and to the extent that a reasonable person would believe it immediately necessary to prevent or terminate the commission or attempted commission of a criminal trespass by the other person in or upon the premises.”

If Kelly was legally justified to either threaten or use physical force to stop a trespasser, and there was no physical evidence to link Kelly to the deceased illegal alien found on his property, how did this hapless rancher come to be tried for this “crime” in the first place?

When we discussed this case in February of 2023, we noted that “Arizona has been discouraging property owners along the border from enforcing their property rights against illegal alien trespassers for years.” We also cited to a previous instance where a rancher was forced to give up his property to satisfy a judgment brought against him by an illegal alien shot while trespassing on his property.

According to Dr. Martinelli, “Santa Cruz County Attorney George Silva and Sheriff David Hathaway [exhibited] ‘extreme confirmation bias’ in their handling of the case…’This was a political prosecution,’ Martinelli added. ‘They had zero forensic evidence. They had tons of exculpatory information and evidence supporting Mr. Kelly’s innocence in this. Yet they continued to push forward and with their false narratives to convict this man. I would suggest, this is my opinion, that they used lawfare against him. I mean, they didn’t even have a motive that they were able to establish in this case.'”

Regarding Sheriff Hathaway in particular, there is some evidence for Martinelli’s allegations. Before the trial, Hathaway can be seen in a video interview accusing Kelly of being an “outsider” who came to Arizona to “hunt me some Mexicans.” At one point during the trial, “[t]he defense team questioned the [personal] involvement of Hathaway in this case when he normally doesn’t get involved.” Hathaway testified that “others in the department and county attorney’s office were hesitant to go to Mexico [to interview witnesses] while he has experience in other countries.”

While this may be true, it is equally a fact that Hathaway is a Democrat, elected Sheriff of Santa Cruz County in 2020, who has expressed his desire “to preserve the relationship with Mexico, which is essential for the community’s shared economic and cultural interests.” Hathaway has also stated that efforts to control illegal entry across the Southern border are unlawful, saying “he doesn’t support the placement of double-stacked shipping containers along the southern Arizona border as he does not believe there is an invasion…Hathaway said if the containers arrive in Santa Cruz County, he’ll arrest construction and security crews and charge them with ‘illegal dumping on public lands’…he would prefer a four-strand livestock fence along the border.”

In other words, the Sheriff of Santa Cruz County thinks Rancher Kelly is an “outsider” who “hunts Mexicans”; that the border is secure; that good relations with Mexico are essential; and was willing to travel across the border to find witnesses to testify against Kelly. All in a State that has a history of discouraging property owners from defending their land and their rights from illegal alien trespassers.

Sounds like justice was served despite the efforts of Sheriff Hathaway.

Judge John Wilson (ret.) served on the bench in NYC

Photo: Pixabay

Quick Analysis

Long Term Effects of Putin’s Ukraine War

“The war in Ukraine is leading both Moscow and Kyiv to engage in increased cyberattacks that are destructive to both infrastructure and civilian lives from meddling with energy networks to manipulating people into committing violent acts,” according to Luke Rodeheffer of the Jamestown Foundation. Both sides are engaging in activities that will leave their mark on the world for years to come as the war has increasingly blurred the lines of official state actions and those of non-state cyber actors. Criminal hacking groups and official intelligence organizations are developing working relationships that offer attractive opportunities to collaborate with good pay. As the kinetic war drifts into the cyberspace domain, some members of government agencies are moonlighting as hackers and coordinating their activities over the Internet. Early on in the war Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, announced that the country needed a volunteer Information Technology (IT) Army capable of coordinating activities against Russian targets using Telegram. Today that IT Army distributes free hacking tools to its volunteers for conducting cyberattacks on the Russian infrastructure and companies. Using tens of thousands of network devices, Ukraine’s volunteers have had success in performing distributed-denial-of-service attacks. “Ukraine has conducted a large-scale call center fraud operation targeting Russia, particularly older and more gullible Russian citizens, which is forcing the Russian state to increase surveillance on communication networks,” says Rodeheffer. In late June the IT Army overwhelmed Russian target Internet infrastructure with “connection requests” that ultimately led to interruptions in Mir, Russia’s national payment card system, according to Lizzie Simpson writing for Habr. She quotes a Forbes interlocutor in the Russian information security industry as saying: “The attack is 100%, and this is the work of the IT army of Ukraine.” Confirmed attacks such as the Mir incident are changing the character of warfare and are challenging for international security networks to control. The intensity and breadth of the attacks continues to increase on both sides of the conflict, however, it started long before the invasion. As early as 2010, there are indications Russia engaged in destructive cyberattacks against Ukraine. One of the most egregious strikes occurred in the winter of 2015 against the country’s power grid. Years before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia used hacks to shut down the computer infrastructure of TV channels in the country, according to an expert involved in the investigation of one of the episodes. Russia carried it out in a “multi-stage secret infection of information networks,” says Vsevolod Nekrasov of Epravda. Russia often employs these weapons against Ukraine in its current war effort against the civilian infrastructure. Using malware capable of permanently erasing data, Russia is seen as the likely sponsor of last December’s attack on Kyivstar, Ukraine’s largest telecommunications company. It resulted in extensive interruptions in telephone and Internet services that disabled the country for weeks. Kyivstar called it “catastrophic” at the time. In April, a response by a Ukrainian security services linked group called “Ukrainian Blackjack,” responded in kind by targeting a Russian data center utilized by several Large Russian companies and defense-related conglomerates. NV.ua reports that the group destroyed 300 terabytes (TB) of data. A DVD-R holds 4.7 GB. One would need 63,830 DVD’s to hold 300 TB of data! Ukraine has also targeted public figures in Russia linked to the war including high-ranking Duma members and policymakers focusing on the Middle East and Central Asia. Two of those, Alexander Babakov and Semyon Bagdasarov were close confidants of Putin. Their emails exposed sensitive detailed plans on how Russia planned to work with Iran to avoid sanctions. Simultaneously with the increase in cyberattacks, is a corresponding rise in cybercrime aimed at the Russian citizenry. Many of these incidents were in the form of fraud calls tricking Russians into transferring money out of the country or revealing personal information, according to RIA Novosti. “The scale of Ukrainian cybercrime has provided Moscow with additional justification to bolster its internal communications surveillance systems, under the auspices of detecting fraudulent phone calls,” says Rodeheffer. Radio Svoboda is reporting that it is also being used as an excuse to rush the integration of the occupied regions of Ukraine into Russia’s telecommunications systems and SORM, the communications surveillance system. What is most problematic is that the criminal elements involved may make it difficult to dismantle this “underground” after the war ends, says Rodeheffer. What is tolerated during a war, including the need for questionable characters with technical expertise, may lead to a new type of 21-century warfare that extends beyond the current geography of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. It could end up as a battle for the survival of both Western military and civilian infrastructures.