BOISE, Idaho — On what was to be the first day of his trial on a misdemeanor trespassing charge, Ammon Bundy has made a plea deal in connection with his arrest outside St. Luke's Meridian in March 2022.
Bundy, who ran as an independent for Idaho governor in 2022, was arrested March 12 and charged with trespassing after he and several other people showed up at St. Luke's Meridian to protest hospital and police actions related to a child who came to be known as "Baby Cyrus." Meridian Police had taken the child into custody after his parents didn't bring the child to a medical appointment and, police said, refused to let officers check on the child's welfare at their home.
Online court records indicate Bundy was set to stand trial starting Monday at the Ada County Courthouse on a charge of trespassing -- third or subsequent offense. However, that trial has been vacated and, court records indicate, a plea deal has been reached in which Bundy has pleaded guilty to first-offense trespassing, and been sentenced to 90 days in jail with 78 days suspended. The remaining 12 days have been credited for time already served, so Bundy will not spend any more time in jail. Bundy's sentence also includes one year of unsupervised probation.
This wasn't the first time Bundy had been found guilty of trespassing in Ada County. He was sentenced to 10 days in jail with nine suspended in March 2022 in connection with an April 2021 incident at the Idaho State Capitol. Bundy is appealing his conviction related to trespassing at the capitol during the special session in August 2020.
Bundy is among the defendants in a lawsuit brought by St. Luke's, which also names Diego Rodriguez, who is the grandfather of "Baby Cyrus," as well as Bundy's People's Rights Network, the Freedom Man PAC and Freedom Man Press, LLC. The lawsuit claims that Bundy and the other defendants staged a "coordinated campaign of harassment and intimidation" against St. Luke's and its employees in the March 2022 incident at St. Luke's Meridian as well as protests that followed at St. Luke's Boise, and via what St. Luke's claims was ongoing harassment online. That lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in July 2023.
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