A North Dakota lawmaker is proposing legislation to ask President Donald Trump to grant clemency for two men convicted in connection with the infamous 1983 Medina shootout that left two federal officers dead.
Sen. Jeff Magrum, R-Hazelton, said he plans to present a resolution to a key legislative panel on Monday regarding convicted killers Scott Faul and Yorie Kahl.
The measure states that Faul and Kahl “have remained incarcerated for more than 40 years and their length of imprisonment warrants consideration for executive clemency.”
Clemency encompasses a pardon and a commutation. The measure does not specify a pardon, which wipes away a conviction, or a commutation, which ends a prison sentence early but doesn’t remove a conviction.
“It will be controversial, and I expect it to be,” Magrum told the North Dakota Monitor Thursday. “But I’m committed to doing what’s right.”
Legislative Management, a powerful committee of lawmakers who guide the Legislature’s decisions between sessions, will decide whether to advance Magrum’s measure along with others for a special session starting Sept. 2. Gov. Kelly Armstrong called the special session to restrict kratom and related products.
Magrum said Faul reached out to him after seeing he was one of the state’s three presidential electors during the 2024 election and asked if Magrum had any access to Trump. Magrum told Faul he did not.
“I thought, why don’t I try a resolution and see what the Legislature thinks, and I’m hoping to get sponsorships from legislators in that area,” Magrum said.
Kahl is the son of Gordon Kahl, who was a leader of a group known as Posse Comitatus and was wanted in connection with refusing to pay federal income taxes. On Feb. 13, 1983, the Kahls and others including Faul left a meeting in Medina and encountered law enforcement at a roadblock near town, where the deadly shootout unfolded.
U.S. Marshal Kenneth Muir and Deputy Marshal Robert S. Cheshire Jr. were shot and killed. Three other officers were wounded. Yorie Kahl was shot in the stomach.
Gordon Kahl and the others fled the scene, but his wife and son were arrested shortly afterward. Faul surrendered. Gordon Kahl was killed in June 1983 in a shootout with law enforcement in Arkansas.
A jury convicted Faul and Yorie Kahl of second-degree murder, assaulting marshals and other law enforcement officers and other charges, according to court documents. They were sentenced to two concurrent life sentences and received lesser sentences for the other offenses.
“It’s a tragedy no matter whose side you are on,” Magrum said.
The shooting shocked people around North Dakota for its violence and the deaths of two federal officers in a quiet, sparsely populated state. Medina today is a town of 260 people along a slope of Interstate 94 and a gateway to Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge.
North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley, who was twice North Dakota’s top federal prosecutor, said the two men “are convicted, rightfully so, of cold-blooded murder of law enforcement officials in an unprovoked, vicious attack.”
“I would welcome the opportunity to share the actual facts of these vicious crimes with any legislator who is forced to consider this matter,” Wrigley told the Monitor. Faul and Kahl “should die behind bars,” he said.
House Judiciary Chairman Larry Klemin, R-Bismarck, said he does not agree with Magrum’s measure.
“They were criminals and they killed two marshals in a gunfight,” Klemin said. Lawmakers are unlikely to take up such a measure in a special session with limited time, he said.
In a statement, former U.S. Attorney Tim Purdon, who served from 2010-2015, said most North Dakotans remember the shock they felt the day of the shooting and the deaths of the two federal officers
“The idea that their own elected officials would now be seeking to have their murderers released from Federal Prison will be an absolute punch to the stomach,” he said via email.
The resolution says Faul and Kahl’s requests for parole were denied in 2023 and 2025.
Being eligible for parole does not guarantee an inmate will be paroled, Klemin said.
Magrum said he’s spoken to the family members of Faul and Kahl who have expressed exhaustion in waiting for them to be released.
“I know there are victims on the other side, and I’m very sympathetic to them too,” Magrum said. “I just feel that justice is not being served in this case.”
Faul, 73, is held at a federal prison in Michigan. Kahl, 67, is at a federal prison in North Carolina.
Reach North Dakota Monitor reporter Michael Achterling at machterling@northdakotamonitor.com
Reporter Jack Dura can be reached at jdura@northdakotamonitor.com.
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