User:Sherurcij/lon

Lon Tomohisa Horiuchi (born June 9, 1954) is a U.S. FBI sniper who became notable after he was charged with manslaughter following the shootings during the Ruby Ridge standoff. The charge was dismissed and Horiuchi was later deployed during the Waco Siege.

Raised a Roman Catholic in Hawaii, the Japanese-American graduated from West Point in 1976. Horiuchi is married and has six children, some of whom were homeschooled. He twice appeared in Soldier of Fortune magazine prior to the Ruby Ridge standoff.

Ruby Ridge
In 1992, while working at sniper position Sierra 4 for the FBI Hostage Rescue Team at Ruby Ridge, Horiuchi shot and killed Vicki Weaver, while also wounding her husband Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris.

After his first shot hit and wounded Randy Weaver, Horiuchi fired a second shot at Kevin Harris some 20 seconds later as he was running into the Weaver home. The bullet struck and killed Vicki Weaver, who was standing behind the door through which Harris was entering the home. Vicki was holding her 10-month-old baby Elishiba in her arms, and was armed. The round struck and wounded Harris.

It is unknown whether the FBI realized that Vicki Weaver had been hit. The next morning, an FBI agent called out to the cabin by megaphone and stated that the besiegers had eaten pancakes, thereafter asking what Mrs. Weaver had eaten that morning.

In September 1995, Horiuchi testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on the Ruby Ridge shootings, but followed legal advice and invoked his Fifth Amendment rights.

In 1997, Boundary County, Idaho Prosecutor Denise Woodbury, with the help of special prosecutor Stephen Yagman, charged Horiuchi in state court with involuntary manslaughter. Horiuchi successfully petitioned to remove the case to federal court, where the case was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge on May 14, 1998, who cited the supremacy clause of the Constitution which grants immunity to federal officers acting in the scope of their employment. The decision was based on the failure of the State to assert that Horiuchi was outside the scope of his duty as an FBI employee or that he acted with malice or other criminal intent, and the State's failure to prove that Horiuchi acted unreasonably, as well as a determination that Horiuchi thought his actions were reasonable. The court stated that "it would be objectively reasonable for Mr. Horiuchi to believe that one would not expect a mother to place herself and her baby behind an open door outside the cabin after a shot had been fired and her husband had called out that he had been hit."

The decision to dismiss the charges was reversed by an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit, which held that enough uncertainty about the facts of the case existed for Horiuchi to stand trial. In an opinion by Judge Kozinski, the court pointed out inconsistencies in Horiuchi's testimony concerning his motivation for the shot, which cast doubt on whether he had acted reasonably under the circumstances, thus creating the need for a trial to establish the issue.

Horiuchi had testified that he shot at Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris to prevent them from shooting at an FBI helicopter, but gave contradictory statements during his testimony about where he thought the helicopter was. He initially testified that he thought the helicopter was "somewhere behind my location", but later testified on cross-examination that he "would be guessing if I told you where it was." Perhaps most importantly, Weaver was shot in the back, which did not comport with Horiuchi's assertion that the helicopter was behind him. The court also pointed out that Horiuchi was familiar with the flight operations in the area, having himself been a passenger on a recent flight. His testimony regarding the vulnerability to ground fire of his own flight was also contradictory. The court thus found a reasonable doubt as to whether Horiuchi sincerely believed that the helicopter was close enough to Weaver and Harris for them to have a significant chance of hitting it. Horiuchi also testified regarding his decision to take a second shot at Harris that "I had already made that determination [that Harris was preparing to shoot at the helicopter] after that first shot, so if I saw him again[,] I was going to shoot at that individual again," further calling into question Horiuchi's professed motivation of protecting the helicopter, at least with respect to his second shot.

Despite testifying that protecting the helicopter was his primary motivation for the shooting, Horiuchi also testified that he was following the Rules for the Use of Force (RUF) in effect at the time (these rules were ruled unconstitutional in a separate case due, among other things, to the absence of a requirement for a target to represent an immediate threat ). The court found that the potential of the RUF, which were for FBI snipers to shoot "any armed male" on sight, to have served as the real motivation for Horiuchi's shots was sufficiently unsettled to warrant a trial on the issue.

The court also noted that the Weavers were undisputedly not aware that snipers had been deployed around their home until Horiuchi fired his first shot. Although officers are allowed to fire at a target that presents an immediate threat without giving a warning (which is generally required ), the court pointed out that after Horiuchi's first shot, even assuming that Harris was preparing to fire at the helicopter prior to that shot (and that the shot was therefore justified), there was no evidence to indicate that Harris was still trying to shoot at the helicopter. The "immediate threat" exception to the warning requirement could thus not be definitively applied to Horiuchi's second shot, and Horiuchi had effectively "left Harris and the Weavers no option except to fight or flee."

The court's other reasons for its reversal of the case were Horiuchi's professed uncertainty during Weaver's separate trial as to which of the two men had threatened the helicopter moments before, which contrasted with his testimony in this case. Here, he said he simply made a mistake, hitting Harris with his first shot but meaning to hit Weaver. This statement implies that he could, in fact, tell the men apart. The court also noted conflicting testimony about Vicki Weaver's position and visibility at the time of the second shot, and that the danger of the armed gunman escaping and causing harm to others (another exception to the warning requirement, and used by Horiuchi in his defense) had "no support."

Notably, the 9th Circuit en banc opinion states that modern judges have tended to determine issues of fact themselves, prior to a jury trial, in cases where a criminal immunity defense is raised, because the primary benefit of immunity is to avoid a trial. The court emphasized that a trial is a significantly stressful event to the agent being tried, as well as a heavy burden on the agency to which the agent belongs, and that a criminal case also differs from a civil suit (in which the Weavers and Harris ultimately prevailed) in that the officer's agency cannot indemnify him if he is found liable. The court thus recommended that a state judge, not a jury, determine whether Horiuchi could make use of the criminal immunity defense.

Ultimately, the then-sitting Boundary County Prosecutor, Brett Benson, who had defeated Woodbury in the 2000 election, decided to drop the charges because he felt it was unlikely the state could prove the case and too much time had passed. Yagman, the special prosecutor, responded that he "could not disagree more with this decision than I do."

The 9th Circuit granted Boundary County's motion to dismiss the case against Horiuchi on September 14, 2001.

The surviving Weaver family received $3.1M in 1995 to settle the civil suit brought against the BATF for wrongful death. Harris received $380,000 in 2000.

Horiuchi remained employed with the FBI throughout his prosecution.

Waco
On September 13, 1999, Charles Riley, a fellow FBI sniper deployed during the Waco Siege claimed that he had heard Horiuchi shooting from Sierra 1, a FBI-held house in front of the compound holding eight snipers, including Horiuchi and Christopher Curran. Riley later retracted his statement, saying that he had been misquoted, and that he had only heard snipers at Sierra 1 announce that shots had been fired by Branch Davidians.

Three of the twelve expended .308 Winchester shell casings that the Texas Rangers reported finding in the house were at Horiuchi's position. However, officials maintain that they could have been left behind from the earlier use of the house by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and that it would be "nearly impossible" to match them to Horiuchi's rifle, as it had probably been rebarreled since that time.

For this court date, he was represented by attorney Adam Hoffinger.