From staff and wire reports | Posted: Monday, April 24, 2006 12:00 am
OMAHA, Neb. - A man from Nebraska's Panhandle, and a former Fremont County rancher, can't have guns as tools of his cattle trade or to reflect his cowboy heritage or for any other reason, a federal jury has ruled.
On Friday, the jury found that Casper native Rudolph "Butch" Stanko of Gordon broke a federal law that bars felons from possessing weapons.
Stanko had argued that his felony conviction was only for a white-collar crime: conspiracy to violate a federal law about meat inspection.
But prosecutors said that when Stanko was living in Montana after leaving prison, he was told by two federal judges that he couldn't have any weapons.
The 59-year-old Stanko had weapons in the Gordon home he eventually shared with a woman and her daughters. After a domestic disturbance, one of the daughters called authorities and told them about the guns.
Jurors found Stanko guilty of being a felon in possession of seven guns. He was not convicted on another charge: bringing a .22-caliber derringer across state lines into Nebraska.
It was unclear how much prison time he could face. Calls Saturday to his lawyer, David Domina of Omaha, and the prosecutors' offices were not immediately returned.
Domina said some of the guns in Stanko's possession had been in his family for many years.
Domina had characterized Stanko as a man of the West, shaped by its cowboy heritage. And as an active cattlemen, Domina said, Stanko's guns were tools of the trade on ranches.
Stanko plans to appeal this conviction, Domina said. Stanko thought he had to establish his rights by testing the law.
Son of Casper area meatpacker Rudy Stanko, who founded the Rocky Mountain Packing Co. in 1952, the younger Stanko has had numerous encounters wth state and federal authorities.
In 2004 in Wyoming, Stanko unsuccessfully sought $180,800 from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department for what he said were 198 cattle killed by grizzly bears. He also asked the state for permission to kill grizzlies and wolves on his son's grazing allotment.
In 2003, a handful of his cattle wandered into an area where they were feeding with elk, raising concerns over the state's brucellosis-free status.
In 1984 he and his family's now-defunct Cattle King Meat Packing Co. of Denver were part of a scheme to sell meat rejected by inspectors. In prison for six years, Stanko wrote a book that said a Zionist conspiracy had destroyed his company.
Stanko was involved with the white supremacist World Church of the Creator, founded in 1973 by Florida racist Ben Klassen. Creators eschew Christianity and worship the white race, believing whites to be the creators of all worthwhile culture and civilization.
Before he committed suicide in 1992, Klassen had named Stanko as the next supreme leader or "Pontifex Maximus."
However, Matt Hale of Illinois became the Pontifex Maximus in 1996. Hale announced he was moving the organization's headquarters to Riverton in late 2002. Hale was sentenced to 40 years in prison last year for obstructing justice and soliciting an FBI informant to murder U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow of Illinois.
Stanko had unsuccessfully argued before the Montana Supreme Court that as an ordained minister in the white supremacist Church of the Creator, he should have been allowed to preach to fellow inmates at a Lewistown jail and at the state women's prison in Billings.
In 1998, Stanko successfully challenged Montana's basic rule speed limit law that required motorists to drive in a "careful and prudent manner," which at the time was Montana's only daytime speed limit.
In 1996, Stanko sought to overturn a Montana law that requires certain cattle buyers to have a state livestock dealer's license. Both federal and state courts rejected his arguments.