Posted on 01/28/2009 1:38:35 PM PST by rellimpank
FAIRPLAY — A 45-year-old Texas businessman who engineered the slaughter of 32 bison in South Park last winter was sentenced today to 10 days in the Park County jail for cruelty to animals.
Park County District Court Judge Stephen Groome said he would have given Jeffrey Hawn a longer jail term if he could, but he was bound by a plea agreement between Hawn's lawyer and the district attorney's office.
Groome said that the manner in which the animals were killed — sometimes riddled with as many as eight bullets — left him appalled.
"What I find really disturbing is that these animals definitely suffered," said Groome.
(Excerpt) Read more at denverpost.com ...
-ping-
He should have caught ten days for each one that they killed.
Consecsecutively.
("...the manner in which the animals were killed — sometimes riddled with as many as eight bullets...")
Get it? The bison were wandering repeatedly onto his land, according to the testimony of their owners. There was a lot of snow on the ground, making it hard to keep herds contained (I guess snowdrifts went way higher than the fences). The county had declared a state of emergency due to the snowdrifts.
I sympathize with the ranchers' difficulty, but whose problem is it? Their behemoth animals were tromping around on other folks' property—and the article at the link says they discovered their animals had been shot in one of their "bi-weekly" property checks. Well gosh, it's such a darned emergency for your precious herd that adjacent property owners are supposed to treat your invading animals real special—but you didn't take a peek at your herd for two weeks? You're lucky your neighbor didn't shoot you.
Indian and His Buffalo
An Indian walks into a cafe with a shotgun in one hand; one hand pulling a male buffalo with the other. He says to the waiter:
‘Want coffee.’
The waiter says, ‘Sure, Chief. Coming right up.’
He gets the Indian a tall mug of coffee. The Indian drinks the coffee down in one gulp, turns and blasts the buffalo with the shotgun, causing parts of the animal to splatter every where and then just walks out.
The next morning the Indian returns.
He has his shotgun in one hand, pulling another male buffalo with the other. He walks up to the counter and says to the waiter.
’ Want coffee ‘
The waiter says ‘Whoa, Tonto!
We’re still cleaning up yo ur mess from yesterday.
What was all that about, anyway?’
The Indian smiles and proudly says ..
‘Training for position in United States Congress:
Come in, drink coffee, shoot the bull,
leave mess for others to clean up,
disappear for rest of day.
“Groome said that the manner in which the animals were killed — sometimes riddled with as many as eight bullets — left him appalled.”
So apparently there was nothing illegal about killing them, even shooting them. What was illegal is that he shot them so many times.
Hard for me to understand that logic.
His attorney, Pam Mackey, also represented Kobe Bryant. I knew her name was familiar.
Well, that and the fact it screws up the barbecue if you have to tell people to watch for lead...
Just sayin’.
Colonel, USAFR
Biweekly could also mean twice per week.
--the letters following the article pretty well display why I don't post much on the Denver Post--the IQ level is usually at room temp or below--
Happy to see the judge gave him the ten days, he deserves it. Had it not been for his attorney advising him to the plea bargain I’d bet he would have spent considerably more time behind bars.
You’re correcet, he should have hired an attorney that knew something about open range law and it would possibly have prevented this. I say possibly because because from previous threads it seems this Hawn is a hothead and thinks he is above the law.
The Aztlan group that killed most of the bison insisted on a letter from him before they would kill any animals and he had some idiot attorney draft one for him and gave it to the leader of the group, sounds like they knew it was illegal.
There’s been many threads posted on this and there’s a lot to it that isn’t covered in this piece. Anyone can use the keyword Hawn in the search feature to access some of those other threads.
I’m guessing you’re unfamiliar with open-range laws in many western states.
What;s equally grotesque is that it appears most of the animals were left to rot in the pasture. Killing just to see something fall is unethical if the animal is not a varmint and produces the quality meat of bison.
More reprehensible, Approximately 41,800 pounds of meat were wasted,".
They left the carcasses where they fell, with no attempt to use the meat.
Finally, it is open range, so was this puke's responsibility to fence them out of his land.
He hired the 'hunters' after the fact, to find and shoot them. They were shot a month or more after their "trespass".
City folks need to stay to hell in the city, and out of the country, if they can't abide the laws and rules thereof.
I hear you. People like Hawn don’t belong in ranching country, they have no idea what ranching is about and don’t care.
I know several ranchers in Eastern OR through a cousin that lives over there. They are a great bunch of hard working down to earth people and they’re not doing it to get rich, it’s a way of life with them and many city people don’t understand that.
I think it says a lot about the character of these ranchers in CO that this Hawn didn’t wind up shot, you don’t do stuff like he did in country like that.
That would be "semi-weekly," as in "every half-week." Biweekly is every two weeks. Unless it's an illiterate journalist writing, in which case we can't tell.
But if "open range" laws are in effect, I indeed don't know how they work, and my comment is probably moot. The poster's description of "open range" laws sounded pretty sensible for that environment. Another poster seemed to think the shooters actually sought out the bison on their owner's land, which would be really wacky, especially under an "open range" scenario. Perhaps they confused open range with "open shooting"?
Looks like Mackey once again worked her legal magic and got the guy a good deal.
I'm very disappointed with Deputy District Attorney Katie O'Brien.She cut a deal Hawn and his lawyer.
If you look it up in a dictionary, it says it is either twice a week or every two weeks. I agree with you that twice a week should be semi-weekly, but I don’t make the rules.
14 bison were killed on land owned by Catherine Pimm.
Eight were killed on Bureau of Land Management property,
four on U.S. Forest Service property,
three on property of Robert Lemm
three on Hawn’s ranch.
What will this dirt bag do next?
ten days.
Hiya George, kinda surprised the judge gave him the full ten days.
Hi Jaz
The plea bargain stipulated 10 days as maximum jail time Hawn would serve.
He will serve five consecutive days beginning Feb. 2. He will be released during the weekend and will begin serving the other five days beginning Feb. 9. His release date will be Feb. 13. Hawn will serve two years of unsupervised probation.
Handing down the sentence, Groome said he believed there was evidence many bison suffered at hands of the hunters and he found that disturbing.
The judge called Hawn’s 10-day sentence, “a bargain. If I could sentence you to more time, I probably would.”
http://www.themountainmail.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=4&ArticleID=15674
Thanks...Yeah, I read that and should have said in my post that I thought the judge might go easy on him before the actual sentencing hearing came up. It’s clear the judge had no sympathy whatsoever for him and that’s good, IMO.
A little more satisfaction is that we know Mackey doesn’t work cheap. Between the restitution, fines and her fees this cost Hawn some big bucks.
Hopefully, the word will get out to some liberals that they and their liberal attitudes are not welcome.
Then some may stay in whatever liberal city / state that they came from.
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