JONATHAN SWAPP, JOHN T. SINGER GET 10-YEAR PRISON TERMS
JUDGE CRITICIZES SENTENCING RULES

Jonathan Swapp and John Timothy Singer were each sentenced Friday afternoon to 10 years in prison and five years probation for attacking federal officers and using guns in the siege and shootout at Marion, Summit County.

U.S. District Chief Judge Bruce S. Jenkins gave them the minimum prison term required by Congress - five years for each firearms violation.He indicated that by giving probation on other counts, the overall sentence was more balanced, and presumably more in line with what he would have handed down without the requirement for minimum mandatory terms.

"I haven't got very much to say," Jonathan Swapp told the court. "I'd just like to let you know that whatever does happen, whatever I do get, I'm willing to face."

According to Swapp, some of his beliefs "well, they've been trampled, they've been made a mockery of, they've been made a joke of . . . . These things to me are the most important things in my life . . . . I will die for my God, I will go to prison for life for my God."

The fact that Jenkins had to give a minimum of five years, in consecutive terms, for each firearms count sparked a heated confrontation with U.S. Attorney Brent D. Ward.

The judge called for Congress to re-examine the wisdom of imposing flat minimum sentences without regard for the matrix of stress, feelings and background involved. He said he thinks it is bad public policy and shortsighted.

But Ward responded, "I think Congress is saying, `If you're going to commit a crime, you leave your gun at home, you leave your bomb at home.' "

The sentences imposed against Jonathan Swapp and John Timothy Singer were similar to that ordered earlier in the day for Vickie Singer - the mandatory five-year term on a firearms charge plus five years on probation.

The single departure from the minimum was in the case of Addam Swapp, who was sent to prison for 15 years and put on probation for five more. In addition to two minimum five-year terms on the firearms count, he got five years for blowing up the LDS stake center in Marion.

Bruce Savage, representing Jonathan Swapp, said he didn't know there was much new he could say about his client. Swapp's life "has now been picked apart, played on television, written in newspapers," and studied by government agents, he said. He has been examined psychologically, and his life, romance and most intimate mental workings placed before the court.