Posted on 06/19/2006 1:41:57 AM PDT by Marius3188
A journalist who interfered with a 2004 mountain lion hunt in Sabino Canyon was sentenced last week to less than one day in jail.
John H. Richardson, a writer-at-large for Esquire magazine, pleaded guilty to one count of interfering with a forest officer. He was sentenced June 5, according to a U.S. Attorney's Office news release.
Richardson, 51, was arrested in March 2004 with two animal activists associated with Earth First. At that time, Sabino Canyon was closed while authorities tried to capture several mountain lions.
The activists, Rodney Coronado, 39, and Matt Crozier, 33, were each convicted of one felony and two misdemeanors in December. They are to be sentenced next month.
Richardson's recordings of interviews with Coronado and Crozier were used by the prosecution in their trial.
The tapes showed the pair wanted to sabotage efforts by wildlife officials to remove the lions from the canyon.
In the interviews, the pair described creating false trails for tracking dogs and trying to find and disarm traps set by authorities for the lions.
Richardson had already been convicted in state court for criminal nuisance stemming from the same incident.
His time in jail served as punishment for both convictions, the release said.
The conviction of Richardson shows that no individual is above the law, U.S. Attorney Paul K. Charlton said in the release.
"No one's political views nor their profession grants them immunity from prosecution," he said.
"John, meet Mr. Lion. Mr. Lion hasn't eaten in a few days."
"Mr. Lion, this is John H. Richardson. Mr. Richardson is not a world class long distance runner and ought not be too hard to catch."
People need to realize that the lions were here *first*. :-P
http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2005/aug/spy/richardson200.jpg
As a teenager, John Richardson Jr. discovered his father was the CIA station chief in Saigon... before his cover was blown in the early 1960s.
For decades, the son was desperate to know more, but his father was distant and tight-lipped. Then, with his years running out, John Richardson Sr. began to fill in the blanks. After his father's death in 1998, the younger Richardson sought out de-classified documents and convinced some of his dad's old colleagues to talk, too.
My Father, the Spy.
"People need to realize that the lions were here *first*. :-P"
So?
And they weren't here "first", there were other animals here before the mountain lions. Did they get a fair shake? I suggest we eliminate the lions so that mammoths will make a come back. Oh wait they weren't first either.
I was being sarcastic.
Idiot.
sorry, perhaps I should have some coffee this morning to recongnize sarcams without the tag.
I still like my response to that liberal line though.
I have learned that it is best to use the sarcasm tag, even when it seems blatantly obvious to me. /sarc
The article never gets around to describing exactly what Richardson did. 'Interfering with a forest officer' and 'criminal nuisance', the charges, are all that is mentioned and doesn't tell the reader much.
I’m a bit dyslexic, I read this as “Esquire writer draws sentence of hours in mountain lion cage”, which would have made the reading a bit more interesting.
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