by
Matt Giwer (c) 1995 <9/15>
People who do not understand Waco and the view of the Davidians fail to understand why there was no surrender to stand trial. Let me preface this by saying I am not in contact with them and I do not claim to read their minds. However there is enough information to explain why a reasonable person would not surrender.
There is clearly no requirement in law to surrender. No matter how hard you find that to believe, there is not. They were also not resisting arrest as the only arrest warrants were contingent upon the results of a search which never occurred. There can only be a summary arrest when the crime is witnessed by the officer and the FBI was not a witness. They saw the BATF as their attackers and can not be held to an obligation to surrender to them.
Let me say these people did not trust the government in the first place. People who do not trust the government collect the worst stories about the government and believe them to be true. In many cases that belief is correct.
Hardly a year before they certainly heard of Ruby Ridge and, in light of the murder of Vickie Weaver, expected the FBI could murder any of them and get away with it. And they were "negotiating" with the same people any rational person believes murdered Vickie Weaver without penalty. In addition and on the day of the first attack and after the cease fire, a unarmed man who had been working on the water tower, inside it, left it and was murdered by a sniper who claimed he was armed.
With this view of events, they rationally expected to be murdered. And of course they were not wrong as later that same day but unknown to them, an unarmed Davidian was trying to get back into the compound and was murdered by being shot in the back.
But why not surrender to a fair trial? People that do not trust the government certainly to not expect to get a fair trial. They expect perjury and fabricated evidence as a minimum.
Your personal opinion of the reasonableness of that may be different from theirs but consider that they were right. We have since learned there was perjury at their trial. We have learned there was fabricated evidence at the Weaver trial. We have learned evidence that would have shown them innocent was suppressed. We have learned the evidence that would have shown them innocent was destroyed. We have learned that the FBI routinely fabricates incriminating evidence.
And as to expectation of perjury, were distrust not enough, a BATF agent perjured himself by swearing a half blind 76 year old woman was shooting at him. And of course a kangaroo judge signed accepted the perjury and she was jailed and nothing happened to the lying agent. Any rational person who sees that would expect the perjury that continued throughout the trial and in fact into all the hearings that have been held.
Your opinion is your opinion. Their opinion, that they could not get a fair trial, was correct. They did not believe they could get a fair trial and they did not get a fair trial.
So as to why not surrender to a fair trial, there was no fair trial to surrender to. Whether they surrendered or were captured, they faced the same show trial and life long incarceration. Even what they were convicted of was worth only 3-8 years they got 30 years for crimes they were acquitted of. The judge was clearly the chief kangaroo in the court.
Whatever your opinion, they were right. They had nothing to gain by surrendering. And there was no penalty for not surrendering as there is no law against it.
Now to consider Koresh in particular. He had been demonized as a child molester whether or not it is true. It is not a secret that the life expectancy of child molesters in prison is rather short. He was be asked to surrender to a short life expectancy. Any time he surrendered it was tantamount to committing suicide.
Now was he given assurances that he would be protected from the rest of the prison population? According to his attorney, no. That was something the attorney had to negotiate. So they were in fact demanding Koresh commit suicide by surrendering.
As to other individual motivations they have said they were doing what Koresh wanted. He was their leader. He kept order by threatening to make them leave. From what they certainly expected knowing how the government murdered innocent people they certainly would think twice about leaving and take the apparently low risk option of staying inside.
All of this is without going into the government promises made and broken during the siege such as families not being separated when they were immediately separated despite the perjury to the contrary at the most recent hearing.
It is clear that what the Davidians gained by refusing to surrender was a few more days of liberty before being subjected to a show trial in a kangaroo court before going to prison for life. There was no reason for them to suspect anything else and they were correct in their expectations. It devolves to us to demand their release pending a new trial with all of these crimes by the government clearly presented to the jury.
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