On Tuesday, January 31, five more members of the Viper Team pleaded guilty to weapons and conspiracy charges. Four of them, Rick Walker, David and Ellen Belliveau, and Donna Star Williams, took the government plea, while the fifth, Dean Pleasant, did not. Pleasant pleaded guilty to two counts of 'conspiracy to instruct' and one count of unlawful possession of a machine gun.

On December 19, Randy Nelson and Gary Bauer gave similar "straight up" guilty pleas, also to Class III weapons and conspiracy charges. Pleasant said he found the government's plea agreement unacceptable, so that despite its written guarantee of minimal prison time, he could not subject himself to its restrictions.

All of them wanted to go to trial until federal prosecutor Janet Napolitano added the superseding indictments 100 days after their arrests, which increased the mandatory prison time for two of the defendants by ten years. Judge Carroll then split the trials so that all of the gun charges would be tried first, without (per Judge Carroll) the defense being allowed either to examine the disputed weapons or to use Constitutional arguments. As it now stands, neither of the government informants are required to be present at the trial.

Three other Vipers, Henry Overturf, Scott Shero, and Walter Sanville, took the government plea agreement. A few are having second thoughts about that, but so far, only Charles Knight and Chris Floyd will stand trial; the court date is March 23. This was rescheduled from January 23 because Mr. Knight's lawyer detached himself from the case, apparently because of what transpired during an interview Mr. Knight did with the New Times, a local weekly.

Most critically, at some point during the interview, Mr. Knight ignored a court order and showed the reporter the infamous "government buildings videotape." The audiotext is now at large on the Internet, because the reporter taped their conversation, transcribed it, and placed it there. Interestingly, Channel 12 managed to obtain a copy, with which they made their own version of the "government buildings video," playing it on the air.

Even as the Vipers plead guilty, the government's case seems shaky indeed. Why has there been no investigation of the hundreds of missing guns at Shooter's World, employer of confidential informant Drew Nolan? Why has so much effort been exerted by the government to ensure that the confidential informants stay out of the courtroom, including making Doc Schultz an official ATF agent on May 26, the day before they went to the grand jury?

I don't have the answers to those questions, but I do have a few additional factoids.

Only a few months ago, an associate of Sheriff Joe Arpaio (who runs Estrella Jail) admitted to sending guns from Shooter's World to Macao after British police trailed the guns here to Phoenix. Another man, a Samoan, was arrested in Tucson on gun-smuggling charges at about that same time, and Dean Pleasant informed me that that man was supposed to have been kept out of jail by the Viper's arrests.

An investigation needs to be done, and if there is no Viper trial (government lawyers have said it isn't "worthwhile" to try "only two") then it could be a long while before the facts are brought to light, if ever.

I hope that the informants can be found, subpoenaed, and forced to face the defendants they have accused (as the government seems to have forgotten the Sixth Amendment requires).

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