Before taking over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters, Ammon Bundy and other militants were drawn to Burns by an arson case involving a Harney County ranching family.

But it was not the convictions of Dwight Hammond, 73, and his son, Steven, 46, that became the flashpoint. Rather, it was the Hammonds being sentenced to prison a second time in October.

As rumbling about the case grew last month, Billy Williams, the acting U.S. Attorney in Oregon, sent a statement to the Burns Times-Herald, addressing the residents of Harney County.

“I understand that there are some individuals and organizations who object to the Hammonds returning to prison to serve the remainder of their sentences mandated by statute,” Williams wrote. “I respect their right to peacefully disagree with the prison terms imposed.

“However, any criminal behavior contemplated by those who may object to the court’s mandate that harms someone will not be tolerated and will result in serious consequences.”

The Hammonds, allowed to begin serving their sentence after the holidays, returned to prison Monday. As of Tuesday they were listed as inmates at Terminal Island, a low-security correctional institution in San Pedro, California, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

In June 2012, the Hammonds were both convicted of use of fire to damage and destroy property of the United States, following an eight-day trial in Pendleton.

At sentencing, federal prosecutors argued both should receive the five-year minimum prison term required under federal law. But U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan sentenced Dwight Hammond to three months in prison and Steven Hammond to a year and a day, according to court records.

The government appealed, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, ordering the Hammonds in February 2014 to be resentenced. The Hammonds asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the issue, but the court denied the request in March 2015.

In October, Chief U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken resentenced the father and son to five-year terms, with credit for time served.

Such a change in sentence on appeal is not unheard of, but is pretty rare, said Tung Yin, a law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland.

Critics of the resentencing argue that it represents double jeopardy for the Hammonds. But Yin said it is not.

“What double jeopardy means is that we are making people run through the trial more than once,” he said. “… Here they haven’t had to go through a trial again.”

Instead federal prosecutors appealed because the original sentences did not follow federal law.

“There are some rulings that the government can appeal, and sentencing happens to be one of them,” Yin said.

In the case, filed in 2010, federal prosecutors accused the Hammonds of lighting seven fires on federally managed land between 1982 and 2006, the largest of which burned 46,000 acres, according to court records. The government accused the Hammonds of using matches to spark the fires near their ranch.

During the trial, hunters testified that a 2001 fire may have been set to scare them out of a hunting area and destroy evidence of poaching by the Hammonds, according to court records. Another witness — who is Dwight Hammonds’ grandson and Steven Hammonds’ nephew and who was 13 years old in 2001 — testified that he was ordered to ignite fires with matches. He nearly became trapped by 8-to-10-foot flames.

Bureau of Land Management firefighters testified that while fighting lightning-caused blazes in 2006, they had to move to a safer location after Steven Hammond lit fires nearby.

Hammond started the fires to save winter feed for his cattle but did so during a burn ban, at night and without warning anyone about the fires, the acting U.S. Attorney wrote in his statement.

“When confronted by a firefighter the next day, Steven Hammond admitted setting the fires, and made no apology for doing so,” Williams wrote.

Dwight and Steven Hammond faced nearly 20 counts, some individually and some together. The counts included arson and conspiracy to commit arson, threatening to assault a federal officer and tampering with a witness, according to court records.

“The evidence at trial convinced the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the Hammonds were guilty of the federal crime of arson, that is, maliciously damaging United States property by fire,” according to Williams’ statement.

The jurors included a La Grande floral designer, a guitar instructor from Pendleton, a master electrician from Milton-Freewater who worked for the state Department of Corrections and a service writer for a mechanic’s shop in Prineville, according to coverage of the trial by the East Oregonian newspaper.

The case was not the first for the Hammonds, who own and operate Hammond Ranches Inc., according to state records. The family has been ranching on private and public land in Harney County for more than 50 years, according to court records.

In 1994, Dwight and Steven Hammond had a dispute with the federal government over cattle, fences and water on the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. It led to their arrests and a charge of forcibly impeding, intimidating and interfering with federal officers engaged in the performance of their official duties, according to court records.

The Oregonian detailed the “bizarre Old West showdown” on Oct. 3, 1994. The Hammonds tried to stop a crew that was trying to put up a fence to keep their cattle from roaming onto the refuge, according to the story.

“On the day the fence was to be built, the crew and refuge officials arrived to find (Dwight) Hammond had parked his Caterpillar scraper squarely on the boundary line and disabled it, removing the battery and draining fuel lines,” according to The Oregonian report. The Hammonds initially faced felony charges, but they were eventually reduced to misdemeanor charges. The case ultimately was dismissed, according to court records.

While the Hammonds may now be in prison, others continue the fight to get them released.

A petition asking the Obama administration to commute their sentences filed Dec. 28 on the White House website had 4,746 signatures as of Tuesday night.

“The residents of Harney County believe that (the Hammonds) have served enough time and are asking the president for a commute of sentence for the remainder of the Appeals Court sentence,” it reads. “Other citizens of these United States, also believing the Hammonds have served enough time, are also signing this petition.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7812, ddarling@bendbulletin.com