Supporters of Tijerina formed the People's Constitutional Party in 1968. In early 1970, Tijerina was sentenced to prison for charges related to the 1967 Tierra Amarilla courthouse raid. The presiding judge, Garnett Burkes, denied defense claims of double jeopardy. A team of four lawyers spent eighteen months preparing the case, but on the opening day of the trial, Tijerina dismissed them, opting to defend himself. He was charged with the false imprisonment and assault of Daniel Rivera. Rivera, the prosecution's star witness, admitted under Tijerina's cross-examination that he neither knew federal civil rights laws, nor had he been trained in how to protect peoples' civil rights. He also testified that Tijerina was not to blame for the events at Tierra Amarilla. The Albuquerque Tribune compared Tijerina's courtroom performance with Clarence Darrow's. Dr. Frances Swadesh, a University of Colorado anthropologist, testified that Anglos had used force and legal maneuvers to steal the land. Tijerina based his closing argument on Article 6, Section two of the Constitution, which obligates the government to comply with the terms of international treaties, i.e., the protection of the property rights of land-grantees as provided by articles 8 and 9 of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. He continued to assert his constitutional right to place a citizen's arrest on the law enforcement officers who, by their own admission, were ignorant of the law and had violated the Alianza's right of free assembly. Tijerina was sentenced to two years in a federal prison. He was incarcerated in La Tuna, Texas, where he shared a cell with Joe Valachi. Suspecting a plot to poison him and blame the mafia, Tijerina refused to eat, preferring scraps saved by fellow Mexican prisoners. At one point, he was transferred to Albuquerque, where he shared a cell with a 25-year-old Walter Payton, a member of the white militia, the Minutemen, who had been arrested by the FBI on weapons charges after five tons of weapons and ammunition were discovered near Truth or Consequences. When Payton learned that "King Tiger" was being held in the same facility, he told the authorities not to put them together, swearing he would kill Tijerina if he saw him. Prison officials promptly locked them in the same cell. But when the two talked peacefully for more than four hours, Payton was transferred out of the cell.