This is what sparked the latest exchange.
Judge sends Oregon ranchers back to prison
A federal judge in Eugene, Ore., gave the father and son credit for time served but ordered them to serve the remainder of their mandatory five-year sentences for burning BLM rangeland.
EUGENE, Ore. — A father and son who raise cattle in Eastern Oregon are headed back to federal prison for committing arson on public land.
Dwight Lincoln Hammond, 73, and his son, Steven Dwight Hammond, 46, were sentenced on Oct. 7 to five years in prison for illegally setting fires on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property near Diamond, Ore.
The ranchers had already served shorter sentences because the federal judge originally overseeing their case said the five-year minimum requirement “would shock the conscience.”
The Hammonds were subject to re-sentencing because the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out those original prison terms for igniting fires in 2001 and 2006 as too lenient.