Indiana Militia Leader Pleads Innocent To Montana Charges Charged In What Prosecutors Say Was Plot To Kill Officials

A self-proclaimed militia leader from Indiana pleaded innocent Tuesday to charges of advocating violence and terrorism to overthrow the government.

Joe Holland also pleaded innocent before state District Judge Jeff Langton to a charge that he improperly tried to influence potential jurors in his trial through a mass mailing earlier this month.

Langton was among officials allegedly threatened by Holland and withdrew from the case, saying he would ask District Judge Douglas Harkin of Missoula to take it over.

Holland was released on the $250,000 bond he posted in Indiana and was told to refrain from further mass mailings, press releases or interviews involving his case.

He and three other men were charged in early May after undercover officers unearthed what prosecutors said was a plot to kill, by hanging or gunshot, a handful of public officials the militia thought was guilty of treason.

Prosecutors contend a barrage of computer messages, press releases and letters issued from Holland’s Boonville, Ind., office over a fourmonth period advocated violence and terrorism to overthrow the government.

Holland at one point sent a letter to Montana officials bragging he was the leader of the nation’s largest volunteer militia and was capable of mobilizing a million people and warning them that their agents may be sent home in “body bags.”

He has since retracted his claim as militia leader and now says the body-bag reference was a warning, not a threat.

His attorney, John DeCamp, said Montana’s criminal syndicalism law under which Holland was charged violates the First Amendment right of free speech.

Early in June, according to prosecutors, Ravalli County residents began receiving letters from Holland exhorting them to take the law into their own hands and recall Langton.

One of Holland’s co-defendants has agreed to plead guilty to criminal syndicalism and is expected to testify against Holland, who also is under investigation by federal authorities in Indiana on allegations of bank fraud, bankruptcy fraud, securities fraud and tax evasion.

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