Criminal Cases
After a trial in U.S. District Court in Tucson, Arizona which lasted five weeks, both were convicted in 1997 of the conspiracy charge, but were found "not guilty" on the conversion charge. Fuchs was sentenced to 2 years in prison, while Reagan was sentenced to 2½ years, with both also receiving an additional three years of probation. There were no fines levied. The men began serving their sentences on May 4, 1998.
The two appealed their sentences, although in an unusual move for such a case, their prison sentences were not stayed pending appeal. In July, 2000, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-to-1 decision, overturned the convictions on the grounds that the original trial jury was improperly instructed regarding the possible implications of the statute of limitations on some of the conspiracy-related activities. With the reversal, the two defendants were released from prison, after serving 20 months. Federal prosecutors elected not to retry the two.
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“No political party can ever make prohibition effective. A political party implies an adverse, an opposing, political party. To enforce criminal statutes implies substantial unanimity in the community. This is the result of the jury system. Hence the futility of party prohibition.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.”
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