Michael Strickland was stripped of his Second Amendment rights and convicted on 10 felonies and 11 misdemeanors after he was attacked by Black Lives Matter rioters and removed his gun from his holster to ensure his safety. Strickland did not fire a shot, and simply used his weapon to stave off an ongoing attack and peacefully leave the area.
Strickland has now retained top lawyer Robert Barnes, who has filed an appeal to his conviction with the Supreme Court of the United States.
“I didn’t even fire a round, as simply drawing was enough force to get the mob to back away and leave me alone. I didn’t harm so much as a fly,” wrote Strickland in a statement to the press on Wednesday. “I was the one targeted, attacked, tried to get away to avoid further altercation, and ultimately acted to defend myself against what I considered unlawful force and imminent unlawful force being used against me by a gang of masked thugs.”
Strickland continued, “With the council of attorney Robert Barnes, my case has now officially been filed with the Supreme Court of the United States.”
A video released by Project Veritas around the time of the shooting shows Strickland remove his pistol from its holster, then proceed to back away from a violent mob that repeatedly attacked him. After returning the gun to its holster, at least two members of the mob continued to follow Strickland, one of them punching him as he attempted to leave the area. Strickland was ultimately tackled by a SWAT team.
The attorney prosecuting the case proceeded to launch a media smear campaign against Strickland, which he says was done with the goal of tainting any potential jury pool. Strickland also says Judge Thomas Ryan refused to allow exculpatory evidence to enter the courtroom.
“Multiple pieces of exculpatory evidence were ruled to be inadmissible, including an incident where far left ‘documentary’ filmmaker, Skye Fitzgerald, violently body slammed me to the pavement while stealing
two video cameras from me, shattering my arm and leaving me partially disabled,” wrote Strickland. “Judge Ryan, believing he is a mind reader, claimed that is irrelevant with regards to the incident a year later, where I had 10+ people threatening me and accosting me. Judge Ryan thinks the prior incident did not play into my mindset, and must have also believed that it does not impact my ability to go one-on-ten fisticuffs.”
Describing his appeal to the Supreme Court via Barnes, Strickland wrote, “The central question asked is ‘Did the Oregon courts err in holding that there is no Constitutional right of self-defense except for when someone like the judge would have behaved the same way under a purely “objective” “reasonable person” standard, thus excluding all evidence of defendant’s prior experiences, defendant’s state of mind at the time, and defendant’s intent in general?'”
Writing in The Gateway Pundit last year, Strickland described the incident:
A gang of antifa thugs made the conscious and deliberate decision to stage a physical altercation with me. They made a b-line right for me and started attacking me. I tried to get away, they kept coming after me, and with no police around, I eventually drew down on them with my legally carried Glock 27. Fortunately they all stopped coming at me at that moment, they ceased to be threats, and I reholstered, without firing a shot. Every move I made was in reaction to what other people were doing to me. Had I waited another second or two, until their bodies were on top of me, there would not have been that buffer zone, and there’s a significant chance that I would have had to do the unthinkable. I’m very thankful they all finally stopped and backed away from me at the point that I drew, and that that was the amount of force necessary to prevent them from doing further harm to me.
I reholstered after having my gun out for 7 seconds, just enough time to neutralize the threats. I was in a bit of a state of shock. I couldn’t believe I was in that predicament and I had to draw.
I continued to retreat up the block until police eventually showed up. To arrest me.I attempted to explain that I had been attacked and that my actions were in self defense and that I had a Concealed Handgun License, but they didn’t care about anything I had to say. They didn’t even want to watch the video of it on my camera. They threw me in jail.
Barnes, his attorney, also recently joined the Kyle Rittenhouse case. Rittenhouse, 17, is accused of unlawfully killing several far left protesters who attacked him during a George Floyd riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin last year.
