UPDATE: Coleman Barney will be released today from jail pending he post a $100,000 bail. His brother, Sam Barney, who is a school teacher in Huslia, will act as his third party custodian, Coleman's lawyer said. His conditions for release are standard. They include not being in possession or in a building with a firearm. He still faces federal charges however, and the feds could arrest him and keep him in jail before he makes bail.
Coleman Barney, who is among the inner circle of followers of militia leader Schaeffer Cox, arrested earlier this year in an alleged murder plot to kill a state judge and members of law enforcement, wants the court to know he's an upstanding guy. Through his attorney, Barney attempted to convince a superior court judge in Fairbanks that he was a hard-working, drug and alcohol free businessman and church elder with longstanding ties to the Fairbanks area.
Were it not for the seriousness of the indictment, Barneys attorney Timothy Dooley told the court, Barney would be considered eligible to be released on his own congnizance. As it is now, he must come up with $2 million to get out on a bail, and find a babysitter for himself -- someone to watch over him every hour of every day. In the judicial system these people that sign on to hawk over defendants are known as "third party custodians."
"He is still presumed to be innocent," Dooley told the judge at a hearing Friday morning. "And I don't believe that (prosecutors) have showed that he is 'some sort of right wing nut ball.'"
Barney faces 10 felony charges, ranging from helping develop a murder and kidnapping plot to several weapons violations and helping to hide Cox, leader of the Alaska Peacemakers Militia, while a fugitive. Barney's wife, Rachel, who is scheduled to give birth Friday to the couple's fifth child via caesarian section, is also accused with helping shelter Cox. Hours before she was to be at the hospital, Rachel Barney, who is not in custody, sat through the early morning proceedings as Dooley tried to get her husband released.
Dooley argued there isn't enough direct evidence to connect Barney to the alleged death plot. All the court has to go on, he said, are the statements of a confidential informant -- a mole who infiltrated the militia group's highest levels. And as for what might have been said by the infiltrator to investigators to link Barney to the group's plans, "there is a great deal of interpretation of events by the confidential informant," Dooley said.
Barney has lived in Alaska since 1984, owns several parcels of property and a home in the Fairbanks region and is the busy owner of a company -- Mammoth Electric, Dooley said. He's a husband and father, and has many close relatives also living in the same area. If released, Barney would be "handcuffed" to his job, keeping his employees busy as the company works to fulfill several current jobs it has lined up. A member of the Church of Latter Day Saints, Barney also doesn't drink or do drugs, and looks in on others to make sure they have food or their children are cared for, Dooley said. And, as a man who isn't impulsive, he's not the type of defendant who needs the additional oversight a third party custodian would provide.
Barney may be all of those things, prosecutors said, but none of them prove he isn't a danger to the community. The investigation showed Cox, Barney and others had amassed a lot of fire power -- grenades, automatic weapons, other firearms -- and that the group included arson in its plans, state prosecutor Benjamin Seekins told the court.
What's more, Barney's affiliation with a militia that had obtained high-powered weapons and which feels righteous in its anti-government actions, ups the ante, said Seekins. It is when righteousness enters the picture, when a paramilitary organization with military weapons believes it is involved in a "holy war," that people are at their "most dangerous," Seekins said.
At the hearing, the judge decided if he were going to let Barney out on bail, it would have to be under the supervision of a third party custodian. Barney's attorney said he would attempt to find a suitable person for prosecutors and the court to evaluate for that role later in the day. But for now, as Barneys and the other cases move ahead, Barney will have to wait, like all of the other defendants charged in the murder plots thus far, behind bars.
Contact Jill Burke at jill(at)alaskadispatch.com