SAN FRANCISCO - The FBI agent who killed the wife of white separatist Randy Weaver during the Ruby Ridge standoff is immune from prosecution by the state of Idaho, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
FBI sharpshooter Lon Horiuchi shot Vicki Weaver on Aug. 22, 1992, as she was holding her baby. At the time, federal agents were converging on the family's remote Idaho cabin to arrest Randy Weaver on a weapons trafficking charge.
Horiuchi has maintained that he did not see Vicki Weaver when he fired at Kevin Harris, an armed associate of Randy Weaver who was ducking into the cabin.
Prosecutors in Idaho pursued a manslaughter charge against Horiuchi, but the charge was dismissed by a federal judge. A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal, ruling 2-1 that the U.S. Constitution gives supremacy to federal laws, making Horiuchi exempt from criminal prosecution by the state.
Horiuchi was entitled to immunity because, they said, he was acting in his official duty as a federal law enforcement officer and reasonably and honestly believed that shooting the fleeing suspect would prevent him from taking an armed and defensive posture.
''Horiuchi does not have to 'show that his action was in fact necessary or in retrospect justifiable, only that he reasonably thought it to be,''' said U.S. District Judge William B. Shubb in the majority decision, as he quoted from a previous appellate decision. Shubb is assigned temporarily to the appeals court.
In a dissent, Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski said he sided with others who considered the shooting ''patently unconstitutional,'' including, he said, a Senate committee, the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility and a prior panel of the 9th Circuit Court.
''Since when does taking up a defensive position justify the use of deadly force? Taking a defensive position may have kept the suspects from being apprehended right away, but it would have posed no immediate threat to the officers,'' wrote Kozinski.
Boundary County Prosecutor Denise Woodbury, the lawyer who brought the Idaho manslaughter charge, was out of state and could not be reached for comment.
The ruling disappointed Michael Mumma, Weaver's attorney in Jefferson, Iowa, where he now lives.
''I think all along there's been disappointment by the family that no one was held responsible for Vicki's death. It's just one more thing.''
FBI Director Louis Freeh praised the ruling, saying it ''supports what I have always believed.''
''No one in the FBI every wants any situation to end tragically,'' Freeh wrote in a statement. ''The reality is that with alarming frequency, agents must put all their training, experience and judgment to the test and make split-second life-and-death decisions. ... I am grateful for the court's recognition and support of this notion.''
Also killed in the 11-day 1992 standoff were the Weavers' 14-year-old son Samuel and U.S. Marshal William Degan.
Randy Weaver was acquitted of murder and conspiracy charges in Degan's death, but was convicted on failing to appear in court on a previous weapons charge.
After his release from prison in December 1993, Weaver returned to Iowa with his three daughters, Sara, Rachel and Elisheba. He has since remarried the former Linda Gross, a legal secretary, and speaks at gun shows.
The case is State Of Idaho vs. Horiuchi, 98-30149.
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