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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Posted on 01/22/2003 7:19:31 AM PST by NewHampshireDuo
The timing of his trial clearly helped. What jury in its right mind, after all, would sit down in the dead of winter and send a man to jail for picking a flower?
"A lot of people thought this was a big joke," Henry Peters said Tuesday from his home in Rockland. "And it does seem kind of funny getting arrested for picking a flower."
But tickled as he may be by last week's "not guilty" verdict in Knox County Superior Court, let's be clear about one thing. Peters, a 39-year-old boatbuilder, is still peeved and then some at police who took one look at his midsummer night's pick-and-sniff and somehow saw a crime in progress.
His story goes like this:
Peters spent the evening of July 18, 2001, celebrating his cousin's birthday at the Time Out Pub on Main Street in Rockland. After last call, he graciously walked his cousin home and set out on foot for his own place at the north end of town.
Along the way - just outside the Farnsworth Art Museum, to be exact - Mother Nature beckoned.
"I remember seeing these fiery, bright orange flowers," Peters said. And, having just come from a bar and all, "I was feeling pretty good."
So, Peters said, he plucked off a blossom, held it to his nose and continued on down the sidewalk. That's when the cruiser appeared.
What happened next depends on whose testimony you believe. But by the time it was over, Peters was in the back of a police cruiser, his hands cuffed behind his back, choking on pepper spray. And Rockland Police Officer Donald Finnegan was sitting on top of him.
Finnegan's police report stated that he actually saw Peters "grab a handful of flowers from the park, and rip them off." The officer also testified last week that the pepper spray came out only after he told Peters he was under arrest for destruction of city property and Peters started raising a ruckus in the cruiser.
Not true, countered Peters. First came the pepper spray. Then came the ruckus.
"I admit I got mad," Peters said. "I couldn't believe he was doing this to me."
Provocation aside, the jury also had to wade through the biting incident.
According to Officer Finnegan, Peters tried to bite him in the cruiser and actually broke the skin on his arm before he managed to pull it away.
No way, argued Peters (who, let the record show, had suffered through the removal of 10 teeth just a week earlier.) The defendant said the injury occurred when Finnegan "dragged his arm across my mouth" and caught his elbow on one of Peters' remaining teeth.
"All I did was open my mouth," Peters said. "I was gasping for air from all the pepper spray."
By the time he made bail in the wee hours that morning, Peters found himself charged with criminal mischief (the flower bush) and assault (Officer Finnegan's elbow). Prosecutors would try in the months that followed to cut a deal - first five days in jail, then two - but Peters (wisely) refused to bite.
"I said, 'No way.' I just wanted the jury to hear my side of the story," Peters said. "And if they thought I was wrong, I'd take my punishment."
After last week's closing arguments, in which defense attorney Dale Lavi shrewdly noted that the state had failed to prove that the flower in question belonged to the city in the first place, Peters settled in with the courthouse personnel to await the verdict. Some had him convicted on both the criminal mischief and the assault. The bailiff, however, predicted guilty on criminal mischief and not guilty on assault.
"That's what I expected too," Peters said.
No more than an hour into its deliberations, the jury suddenly returned. Peters thought he was a goner - right up until his peers unanimously sent him home. Three days later, the Rockland Courier Gazette heralded the verdict with the headline "Jury Clears Pickled Peppered Petal Picker."
Contacted Tuesday, District Attorney Geoffrey Rushlau theorized that the jury weighed Peters' story against Officer Finnegan's and ultimately found enough reasonable doubt in the latter to side with the defendant.
Perhaps. A better bet is that the wind-chilled jurors just couldn't bring themselves to put a flower picker behind bars.
At least not in January.
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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What about the enviromental damage done? Where's the EPA/Sierra Club/Greenpeace?
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