The Keenan Verdict and the End of the Compound, 1998 to 2005

Lesson 7 left the Aryan Nations compound standing at Hayden Lake, ringed by a community that had organized against it. The compound did not disappear because of a parade, a petition or a proclamation. It disappeared because of a lawsuit about a car that backfired.

The incident, July 1998

In July 1998, Victoria Keenan and her son Jason, who are Native American, were driving near the compound when their car backfired. Jason was then a teenager; the sources give his age as 18, 19 or 21 depending on the report, so this lesson does not print one. The SPLC's case docket says guards at the compound fired on them after the backfire, and NPR describes the neo-Nazis as chasing, shooting at and beating them through the car windows with rifles.¹² In her own account to the SPLC's magazine, Victoria Keenan says a guard pulled her out by the hair.³ Attorney Norman Gissel later said that the $35 in his talk "What do you do with a $35 lawsuit?" was the cost of an X-ray after a rifle blow to her ribs.⁴ Both are plaintiff-side accounts.

Security chief Edward Jesse Warfield pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of aiding and abetting aggravated assault and received a five-year sentence, according to the SPLC's 1999 report; Wikipedia says two to five years. Guard John Yeager entered an Alford plea according to Wikipedia, which is the only source read for that detail, and press coverage of the civil trial describes both men as convicted. A third guard, Shane Wright, was a fugitive.⁵⁶

The guards told a different story at the civil trial. Warfield said the chase was an effort to find out who had paid the Keenans to shoot at the compound; no weapon was found in the car. Yeager said he was drunk and did not recall firing an SKS rifle. Both denied changing their accounts to protect Butler, though letters each wrote to Butler and to the plaintiffs' lawyer conflicted with their testimony.⁷

The lawsuit

The Southern Poverty Law Center filed Keenan v. Aryan Nations (Case No. CV-99-441) on January 25, 1999 in the District Court of the First Judicial District, Idaho, Kootenai County. The defendants were Aryan Nations (also called the Church of Jesus Christ Christian), its leader Richard Butler and others; the judgment also names Saphire, Inc., Michael Teague, Edward Jesse Warfield, John S. Yeager and Shane Wright.¹⁸ The plaintiffs' counsel were Morris S. Dees Jr., J. Richard Cohen and Peter Tepley of the SPLC, with Coeur d'Alene attorneys Norman L. Gissel and Kenneth B. Howard; NPR reports that Dees led the case. Edgar Steele represented Butler and the church. The judge was Charles W. Hosack.⁸²⁹ A claim by Butler against the plaintiffs' lawyers and the SPLC appears in the file index reviewed for this module; its outcome was not located.¹⁰

The trial, day by day

The trial ran from jury selection on Monday, August 28, 2000 to closing arguments on Thursday, September 7. The table follows the Coeur d'Alene Press timeline, CBS, the Seattle Times and the Spokesman-Review; where they differ, the difference is shown.

Date (2000)	What happened	Source
Mon, Aug 28	Jury selection. A 72-person pool was screened with volunteers from the Task Force, according to Gissel.	Spokesman-Review 2009; Coeur d'Alene Press
Tue, Aug 29	Opening statements.	Coeur d'Alene Press
Wed, Aug 30	A former associate testified that Butler gave him a container used in a plan to firebomb a real estate office. (Single source.)	Coeur d'Alene Press
Thu, Aug 31	Two former high-ranking officials each blamed the other for incidents that led to tighter security.	Coeur d'Alene Press
Fri, Sep 1	Judge Hosack ruled Butler and Teague negligent (below).	Seattle Times (AP)
Sep 1 or 2	The plaintiffs' case ended. Butler testified on its last day. The Keenans testified, along with a psychologist on post-traumatic stress and a security expert who said trained guards would not have left the compound. Sources differ on which day.	Coeur d'Alene Press; CBS
Wed, Sep 6	The defense began its case; its first witness, an Ohio chapter leader, called Butler nonviolent. Butler took the stand again.	Coeur d'Alene Press; Spokesman-Review
Thu, Sep 7	Closing arguments (Dees spoke for about 90 minutes), then the verdict.	Spokesman-Review; SPLC docket

The date given in the SPLC docket for the disposition is September 7, 2000, a Thursday. At least one retrospective calls it a Friday; it was a Thursday.

Two steps: the judge's ruling and the jury's verdict

Before the defense began, on September 1, 2000, Judge Hosack ruled that Butler and Teague were negligent in appointing Warfield and in supervising armed, drinking guards, and that the standard for punitive damages was met, leaving the jury to decide the amounts. He said the liability did not depend on the group's views, according to the Associated Press.¹¹ After the defense case the jury answered a special verdict form. The legible portions ask whether the guards committed assault and battery, whether the defendants were negligent, and whether punitive damages should be awarded; the form does not use the phrase "grossly negligent."¹² That phrase appears in Spokesman-Review coverage and in the SPLC's description, and this lesson treats it as a press summary of the two steps.¹³ The jury assigned 90 percent of the fault to Butler, Aryan Nations and Saphire, Inc. and 10 percent to Teague.¹⁴

The judgment in numbers

The judgment totals $6,330,000, with interest at 11.25 percent. It awards $250,000 to Victoria Keenan and $80,000 to Jason Keenan in actual damages, and punitive damages of $100,000 against Yeager, $500,000 against Warfield, $600,000 against Teague and $4.8 million against Butler, Aryan Nations and Saphire, Inc. The plaintiffs had asked the jury for $11.26 million.⁸¹³ The SPLC's Intelligence Report says Butler's share was $5.8 million; that figure does not match 90 percent of the actual damages plus the punitive award, so this lesson uses the judgment's own numbers.

What the verdict was about

The case concerns the appointment and supervision of the guards. It is a civil negligence finding, together with a finding of assault and battery by the guards, against a leader and an organization whose security staff attacked two people. It is not a finding that the group's beliefs were illegal. The distinction is the legal core of the case and a point reporters often get wrong: a judge and a jury held an organization responsible for what its guards did, and the beliefs on its chapel walls were not the basis of the decision. The jurors did hear Butler's writings and his testimony about them, so the case was not hidden from the group's ideas; the legal question was still negligence. The sources used here do not reproduce the jury instructions, and a complete treatment would read them from the court file.¹⁵¹¹

What happened to the compound

The judgment did not itself transfer the compound to the Keenans. On about September 21, 2000, ABC News reported, Butler agreed to deed the property and drop the Aryan Nations name if a new trial was denied.¹⁶ Judge Hosack denied the new trial on October 26, 2000 (the Coeur d'Alene Press timeline says October 27), saying that the defendants were liable for the actions "caused by their hate," according to the Associated Press.¹⁷¹⁸ Butler then filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in October 2000, about seven weeks after the verdict according to the SPLC.¹⁹ The compound was sold at a bankruptcy-court sale on about February 13, 2001; the Keenans were the only bidders, the SPLC loaned them $95,000, and the sale price was not stated in the report. Victoria Keenan said she did what she had to do to help save Coeur d'Alene.²⁰ Wikipedia adds that the group's names also went to the Keenans.⁶

The Keenans sold the property to Greg Carr, a millionaire philanthropist, who donated it to the North Idaho College Foundation, and it became a peace park.⁶¹ Stewart and Wood's 2020 retrospective describes the later sale and endowment; it is a single source for those details. Carr told the Spokesman-Review in 2010 that the community had answered speech with speech.²¹²² Several former church buildings were burned by fire departments for training. A Deseret News report from the Associated Press dated June 29, 2001 says the Northern Lake Fire District burned the compound's security house on a Thursday, which would be June 28; Wikipedia gives June 29 for the headquarters. This lesson writes "late June 2001."²³⁶

After the verdict

Butler died in September 2004 in Hayden, at age 86; the Seattle Times says he died in his sleep on September 8, and the Spokesman-Review reports that he was found dead on a Wednesday, which is the same day.²⁴ Heart failure is the cause Wikipedia gives. At that time about 200 members were actively participating, according to the same account.⁶² Wikipedia reports that in 2009 a Texas-based group called Aryan Nations Revival merged with a Coeur d'Alene-based group using the Aryan Nations name.⁶ The sources gathered here do not describe how large that successor group was or what it did, and the module does not treat it as a continuation of the Hayden Lake compound.

The SPLC's news release of December 13, 2005 is titled "Human rights center opens in Idaho five years after SPLC lawsuit." The title establishes that a human-rights education center opened roughly five years after the suit; the module has not yet read the release itself.²⁵ The Wassmuth Center for Human Rights in Boise, named for the priest who chaired the Task Force, now operates an education building and the Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial.²⁶

Why the case mattered

• It used ordinary civil law. The plaintiffs did not ask a court to ban a belief. They asked a jury to hold a leader responsible for the conduct of his guards.
• It took a long community effort to get there. The Task Force's work from 1981 to 1998 (lesson 7) created the public record and the local standing that the lawsuit relied on, in the view of those who tell the story. The sources used here do not trace that causal chain in detail.
• It ended the compound, not the ideas. The group's dispersal and the later rise of online and mobile groups are the subject of lesson 10.

In their own words and in the record

This section lists who spoke, what they said and which side the source comes from. Quotations are short and attributed; longer material is summarized.

The plaintiffs and their lawyers

• Victoria Keenan (first hand; published by the plaintiffs' counsel's organization). Her account in the SPLC's Intelligence Report covers the chase and the attack. Jason Keenan said after the verdict, "Justice has prevailed," according to the Coeur d'Alene Press timeline.³¹⁸
• Lead counsel. After the verdict Morris Dees said the plaintiffs intended to enforce it. Kenneth Howard told the jury the compound was "no Boys Town," and said ten years later that residents had tolerated Butler out of respect for free speech and religious freedom and that no bombing or shooting had been tied to him.¹⁴¹³²²
• A participant's recollection. Norman Gissel (2009) described the jury screening, the "$35 lawsuit" and Dees's recorded tapes. He said that Dees obtained a judge's affidavit about death threats so that jurors saw heavy security, and that the plaintiffs' side later called this theater.⁴
• Two Task Force participants. Tony Stewart and Christie Wood (2020) say Stewart persuaded Victoria Keenan to meet Gissel and that Dees recruited Stewart after the death of Dees's jury consultant. They are participants, not neutral observers.²¹
• Court record. The amended complaint (allegations), the special verdict form and the judgment are the primary documents, all posted by the SPLC.¹⁰¹²⁸

The defendants and their lawyer

• Butler on the stand (his own testimony, CBS). He said he held absolute authority at headquarters, that he told the guards to watch, and that his movement was a war of ideas; the Spokesman-Review reported on September 6 that he took the stand again as the defense began.¹⁵⁹
• The guards (testimony, Spokesman-Review). Warfield and Yeager gave their versions on the stand and were cross-examined on letters that contradicted them (above).⁷
• Steele (defense counsel, in closing). He called the trial a "railroad job," and the judge struck his remark about bankrupting the group, according to the Spokesman-Review. After the verdict he called the region one of the last bastions of free speech. His own later columns on Butler were not read.¹³¹⁴
• Butler after the verdict. He said, "You can't stop us," and Teague vowed to continue the message, according to the Spokesman-Review.¹⁴
• A character witness. The first defense witness, an Ohio chapter leader, testified that Butler is nonviolent.¹⁸

The judge and the press

• Judge Hosack. His September 1 ruling and his October new-trial ruling are the neutral voice in the case. He found the defendants liable for what their guards did, not for their views.¹¹¹⁷
• Reporters. Bill Morlin of the Spokesman-Review attended the trial; CBS and the Associated Press carried daily reports. Their stories give the testimony; the SPLC's Intelligence Report gives the plaintiffs' view.⁹¹⁵¹⁹

People and personalities

This section describes the people and how they acted. A person is named only where a court record or a news report names them in connection with a public act, and each description is attributed. Plaintiff-side accounts are labeled as such.

• Victoria and Jason Keenan. Named in the court record and every source. Jason Keenan's age is reported variously (above).⁸
• Morris Dees (SPLC). Led the plaintiffs' team and spoke for about 90 minutes in closing. After the verdict he said the plaintiffs would enforce it. The SPLC is an advocacy organization, and its account of the case is attributed.¹³¹⁴
• J. Richard Cohen and Peter Tepley (SPLC). Listed as counsel in the judgment. Cohen showed Butler the guard handbook at trial, according to the CBS report.⁸¹⁵
• Norman Gissel. A Coeur d'Alene lawyer who was also the Task Force's attorney. In 2009 he recounted the case to the Spokesman-Review. He is a participant.⁴
• Kenneth B. Howard. Called one of Idaho's top tort lawyers by the Spokesman-Review; he argued for the plaintiffs.⁸²²
• Judge Charles W. Hosack. First Judicial District judge. He ruled before the defense case, denied the new-trial motion and rejected the argument that the case punished a "right to hate." Some wire reports mistakenly called him a federal judge.¹¹¹⁷
• Edgar Steele. Butler's lawyer. Steele was later convicted (May 5, 2011) of a murder-for-hire plot against his wife and mother-in-law and sentenced on November 9, 2011 to 50 years; he died on September 4, 2014. That case is unrelated to Aryan Nations.²⁷
• Richard Butler. Described in lesson 7. At trial he acknowledged holding authority at headquarters, and the Spokesman-Review reported that he described the guards as unpaid volunteers and some of their conduct as "play acting."¹⁵⁹
• Michael Teague. Chief of staff, a defendant, found 10 percent at fault and assessed $600,000 in punitive damages.⁸¹⁴
• Edward Jesse Warfield, John Yeager and Shane Wright. The guards. Warfield was security chief, pleaded guilty and was assessed $500,000 in punitive damages; Yeager, who said he was drunk, $100,000; Wright was a fugitive.⁸⁵⁷
• Tony Stewart, Christie Wood and the Task Force. Helped screen jurors and, in 2020, wrote their recollections of the trial. Wood, later a council member and Task Force chair (NPR, 2022), was as a young patrolman the officer who, in a 2017 Christian Science Monitor retrospective, kept the sides apart at the marches (lesson 7).²¹
• Sheriff Rocky Watson, Coeur d'Alene police and Idaho State Police. Prepared barriers and promised arrests for anyone who crossed them before an October 2000 Aryan Nations parade, and a Seattle-based group, the United Front Against Fascism, protested, according to an Associated Press report from that month that this module has not re-opened.
• Greg Carr. The philanthropist who bought the property from the Keenans and donated it; he is named because the purchase and donation were public acts.⁶²²
• Experts at trial. A psychologist, Dr. Paul Domitor, testified to the Keenans' post-traumatic stress, and a security expert, Anthony Potter of Harborview, said trained guards would not have left the compound.¹⁸

Source notes for reporters

• Pull Case No. CV-99-441 from the Kootenai County clerk for the complaint, the jury instructions and the judgment.
• The amount is reported as $6.3 million by the SPLC and as a "$6 million judgment" by the Wassmuth Center commentary; use the judgment's figure, $6,330,000.
• The sale was in bankruptcy court, about February 13, 2001; obtain the bankruptcy case number, trustee's report and sale price from the court. The sale price was not stated in the report read.
• Do not call the verdict a finding of "gross negligence" without attributing the phrase; the judge ruled on negligence on September 1 and the jury answered a special verdict.
• The case was in an Idaho state court; some wire copy calls Judge Hosack federal. September 7, 2000 was a Thursday.
• Pull from the Kootenai County clerk the jury instructions, the exhibit list and any appeal; no appellate opinion was found, and that is not proof there is none.

Learn more

• SPLC case docket: The plaintiffs' summary of the case.
• Wassmuth Center for Human Rights: The Boise education center and memorial.
• Britannica, Aryan Nations: A second reference for the group's history.
• Amended judgment, Keenan v. Aryan Nations: The court's own document with the figures.
• Coeur d'Alene Press, Aryan Nations trial timeline: The trial day by day.

Notes

1. "Keenan v. Aryan Nations," Southern Poverty Law Center case docket. Read it online. The SPLC was the plaintiffs' counsel; attribute its account accordingly. ↩
2. "Idaho's fight against the far right, then and now," NPR, June 27, 2022 (carried by WAMC). Read it online. ↩
3. "Victoria Keenan Discusses Run-In with Aryan Nations," SPLC Intelligence Report, 2000. A first-hand account by a plaintiff, published by the plaintiffs' counsel's organization. Read it online. ↩
4. "Lawyer recounts legal rout of Aryan Nations," Spokesman-Review, April 4, 2009. A participant's recollection: attorney Norman Gissel, who represented the plaintiffs. Read it online. ↩
5. "Neo-Nazi Security Chief Sentenced," SPLC Intelligence Report, September 1999. Advocacy organization's report on the plea and sentence. Read it online. ↩
6. "Aryan Nations," Wikipedia, on the 1998 incident, the guilty pleas, the 2000 verdict, the 2001 auction, Greg Carr, the 2004 death of Butler and the 2009 merger. Read it online. ↩
7. "Former Aryan guards' letters conflict with testimony," Spokesman-Review, September 2000 (republished by the Record-Courier). Trial report. Read it online. ↩
8. Keenan v. Aryan Nations, No. CV 99-441, amended judgment, Kootenai County District Court (September 2000), posted by the SPLC. A court document (primary record); the scan was read through imperfect text recognition, so figures were checked against news reports. Read it online. ↩
9. "Defense begins its case in Aryan assault case," Spokesman-Review, September 6, 2000 (republished by a North Idaho newspaper). Trial report. Read it online. ↩
10. Keenan v. Aryan Nations, amended complaint for damages and injunctive relief (1999), posted by the SPLC. Allegations by the plaintiffs' counsel, not findings. Read it online. ↩
11. "Aryan Nations negligent, judge rules in civil case," Seattle Times (Associated Press), September 3, 2000. Wire report of Judge Hosack's September 1 ruling. The AP lead calls Hosack a "federal" judge; he sits on the Idaho First Judicial District court. Read it online. ↩
12. Keenan v. Aryan Nations, special verdict form (6 pages), posted by the SPLC. A court document (primary record); much of the scan is hard to read, and only the legible questions are described here. Read it online. ↩
13. "Plaintiffs ask $11.26 million from Aryans (case goes to jury)," Spokesman-Review, September 7, 2000. Trial report on the closing arguments; it is the source of the "grossly negligent" wording. Read it online. ↩
14. "Jury finds Butler, Aryan Nations negligent; awards $6.3 million in assault," Spokesman-Review, September 8, 2000 (republished by a North Idaho newspaper). Verdict report, with the 90 and 10 percent split. Read it online. ↩
15. Stephan Kaufman, "Aryan Leader Admits He's Top Dog," CBS News, September 2, 2000. National news report of Butler's testimony. Read it online. ↩
16. "Aryan Nations gives up compound," ABC News, September 22, 2000. News report of Butler's conditional agreement. Read it online. ↩
17. "Court upholds judgment against Butler; neo-Nazi vows to continue cause of hate," Associated Press via HeraldNet, October 26, 2000. Wire report of the new-trial ruling. Read it online. ↩
18. "Aryan Nations trial timeline," Coeur d'Alene Press, September 6, 2020. Local newspaper timeline; its account of one witness is a single source. Read it online. ↩
19. "Aryan Nations on verge of collapse following judgment," SPLC Intelligence Report, fall 2000. Written by an advocacy organization allied with the plaintiffs' counsel. Read it online. ↩
20. "Mother and son who sued buy Aryan compound," Seattle Times (Associated Press), February 14, 2001. Wire report of the bankruptcy-court sale; the price is not stated. Read it online. ↩
21. Tony Stewart and Christie Wood, "The verdict that doomed the Aryan Nations," Bonner County Daily Bee, September 6, 2020. Retrospective by two Task Force participants. Read it online. ↩
22. "North Idaho marks 10 years since Aryan Nations verdict," Spokesman-Review, September 7, 2010. Local newspaper retrospective. Read it online. ↩
23. "Aryan inferno," Deseret News (Associated Press), June 29, 2001. Wire report of the burning of the security house. Read it online. ↩
24. Jonathan Martin, "Richard Butler, who led Aryan Nations, dies in Idaho at 86," Seattle Times, September 9, 2004. Newspaper obituary. Read it online. ↩
25. SPLC, "Human rights center opens in Idaho five years after SPLC lawsuit," December 13, 2005. Read it online. Only the title was read for this lesson. ↩
26. Wassmuth Center for Human Rights, history pages. Read it online. ↩
27. "Edgar Steele, former Aryan Nations attorney, obituary," Boston Globe (Associated Press), September 6, 2014. Newspaper obituary, on Steele's 2011 conviction and his death. Read it online. ↩