There's more breaking news in the 1/4/12 Ogden Shootings case, as the Salt Lake Tribune confirms last night's reader comment and reports that supporters of the defendent Matthew Stewart have "temporarily disabled donation functionality" on their recently established Help Matthew Stewart website. Here's the lede:
Fundraising efforts on a website dedicated to help Matthew David Stewart, who is accused of killing an officer and wounding five others in January, were stopped after his family learned they may be violating state law.Check out the full SL-Trib story here:Stewart’s father, Michael Stewart, told The Salt Lake Tribune on Saturday he was surprised to receive a letter on Thursday from the Utah Division of Consumer Protection saying the family had to register for a permit with the state as a charity under the Charitable Solicitations Act. He said he didn’t know the family had been doing anything wrong.
“We don’t want to break the law,” Michael Stewart said, so the family took down the donation feature on their website — www.helpmatthewstewart.org — and submitted an application for a permit on Friday, which cost him $100. He will also have to inform contributors their donations will not be tax-deductible.
Stewart's supporters, still reeling from highly prejudicial misinformation leaks early in the case and from the discourteous treatment that their private attorney has received from the Weber County Attorney's prosecution team in recent weeks, understandably suspect the worst of government motives, as the latest wrinkle in this case now unfolds:
Family members previously planned to hold a yard sale and another was going to do photography to raise money for Matthew Stewart, but now Michael Stewart says he doesn’t know what the family can do without unknowingly violating some law.So what about it, O Gentle Ones? Is this latest defense obstacle merely another illustration of an overly officious government bureau inadvertently and automatically set into robotic action by random citizen complainants? Or does it spell an intentional effort on the part of Utah government officials to throw another wrench into Matthew Stewart's defense, as some supporters of the herein defendant are beginning to suggest?“Does my sister need a permit for a garage sale to sell her junk to help my son?” he asked. “We’d like people to see outrage at the way things are being done here in Utah; it is not right. They are attacking us every way they can.”
Update 2/27/12 6:00 a.m.: The Standard-Examiner is now carrying the story too: