The lawyer for Brandon Baxter, a Lakewood man who is charged with four others of , said Wednesday his client was coached into participating in the scheme by an FBI informant working the case.
Cleveland attorney John Pyle, who took on Baxter’s case this week, said his client would not have — and could not have — gone through with the plot if not for the FBI's involvement.
Pyle said his client will plead not guilty next week.
Baxter, 20, Douglas L. Wright, 26, Anthony Hayne, 35, Connor C. Stevens, 20, and Joshua S. Stafford, 23, are each charged with one count of conspiracy and one count of attempted use of an explosive. They were arrested Monday night.
According to , the agency used a secret informant and an undercover agent to infiltrate the group of self-proclaimed anarchists.
“You can just see flatly between the lines in the government’s complaint about how much (the informant) was doing to encourage, facilitate and suggest,” Pyle said. “That’s the gist of it.”
The informant — who was convicted of cocaine possession in 1990 and robbery in 1991 — began working for the FBI in July 2011. The undercover FBI agent has worked for the agency for 15 years.
The informant met Wright at a Cleveland protest in October 2011, the affidavit said.
The investigation began after Wright told the informant that he and several other anarchists wanted to "send a message to corporations" by causing "violence and destruction to physical property in a variety of ways," the affidavit said. The informant eventually met the other four accused men.
Baxter, who’s been movement, had some issues with the government, Pyle conceded.
“There was some frustration on his part and other dimensions to his thinking, but he just didn’t have the capacity to do this,” he said. “He had no money. The government had to facilitate what they did. Otherwise they wouldn’t have done it.”
Christophe Kochheiser, who knows Baxter and the others from the Occupy Cleveland events, said he was shocked to hear about the charges.
“There’s nothing malicious about him at all,” Kochheiser said, adding he doesn't believe Baxter "is capable" of carrying out what he's charged with.
Represented by different attorneys, each of the men is scheduled to appear at 11 a.m. May 7 at the federal courthouse in Cleveland for a detention hearing and a preliminary hearing.
They will remain in custody until then.
The defense will argue that the alleged conspiracy is the work of agents provocateur. We shall see how that develops. http://rt.com/usa/news/cleveland-fbi-bomb-may-433/
“There’s nothing malicious about him at all,” Kochheiser said, adding he doesn't believe Baxter "is capable" of carrying out what he's charged with. BUT... Brandon Baxter The former Lakewood resident and Lakewood High School student was arrested a few times as a juvenile — including a September 2009 incident when he was arrested for stabbing a family member with a knife. Lakewood police charged him with aggravated attempted murder, but the outcome of the case is not available as juvenile court records are sealed. As an adult, Baxter — whom acquaintances told Patch was intelligent, quiet and strange — was charged with criminal trespassing in 2010, stemming from an incident at Lakewood Park. Bull crap. He (and the others) still consented to the plan and have plenty of other charges. When someone has been arrested 24 times, I think it's time for harsher punishment.
Exactly! Of course, some liberals wasted no time crying "entrapment."