About 10 people gathered outside the federal courthouse in Rapid City, South Dakota, to protest the prison sentence for a man from the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Marc Wisecarver, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, was acquitted of assaulting a federal officer but found guilty of damaging federal property for shooting a rifle into the tire of a truck driven by a Bureau of Indian Affairs employee. He was sentenced to 36 months in prison but protesters said he was only trying to defend his property.

"Marc damaged the weapon used to assault him, and he's being incarcerated for that. Does that make sense?" asked Mitch Wisecarver, The Rapid City Journal reported. "How can you be not guilty of assault by reason of self-defense, but guilty of damage to the weapon used to assault you?"

Judge Richard Battey cited high crime rates on reservations in imposing a tough sentence on Marc Wisecarver. "There's far too much violence in Indian Country," Battey said at the sentencing hearing, the Journal reported. "This is just another example of what I see on a day-to-day basis."

Protesters said Battey was wrong to compare the two issues. They said Wisecarver was exercising his constitutional rights.

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Protesters decry man's 3-year prison sentence over truck shooting (The Rapid City Journal 4/28)