Free Republic

A lawsuit filed by Texas businessman Jeff Hawn alleging that bison owned by Hartsel rancher Monte Downare destroyed his property was dismissed on Dec. 17 after Hawn paid his court-ordered restitution. The restitution was part of a plea deal in a criminal case against Hawn for his role in the slaughter of 32 of Downare's bison... Hawn agreed to plead guilty to one count of felony criminal mischief and one count of cruelty to animals... As part of the plea bargain, Hawn was required to pay roughly $83,000 in restitution. The civil case was put on hold during the criminal...

A software CEO from Texas accused of allowing the killing of his neighbor's bison in South Park last winter is due in court. Forty-four-year-old Jeffrey Scott Hawn of Austin has been charged with 32 counts of animal cruelty, one count of theft of more than $20,000 and a one count of criminal mischief. Prosecutors allege that he "tortured, needlessly mutilated or needlessly killed" the bison, who belonged to another rancher.

A Park County rancher on Friday waived his right to a preliminary hearing and asked to enter a plea in the slaughter of 32 bison owned by his neighbor. It’s hard to find anyone here sympathetic to Hawn.

South of Hartsel, the South Platte River meanders through some of the most fabulous ranch and fishing land in the nation. On a late summer afternoon, the sheer beauty of the setting caused a couple of motorcyclists to stop and point their cameras at a group of handsome horses standing near the river. Exactly five months earlier, a group of 14 men pointed not cameras but guns at a group of bison and shot them dead. Killed were 32 bison belonging to longtime South Park rancher Monte Downare. The slaughter has caused an outrage that the beauty of Colorado's South...

Texas businessman Jeff Hawn was charged May 8 in the March slaying of 32 bison near Hartsel and faces one count of class 3 felony theft, one count of class 3 felony criminal mischief and 32 counts of aggravated cruelty to animals, each a class 6 felony. Hawn turned himself in to the Park County Jail on May 12 and bonded out... Kobe Bryant's attorney The arrest warrant affidavit indicates that the bison had been killed over the course of a number of weeks. For instance, it states that on April 1 officers "retrieved a spent bullet from one of...

In a breach of the local code of ethics -- and possibly the law -- 32 are killed after straying onto a neighbor's land.FAIRPLAY, COLO. -- This is not a place where buffalo are welcome to roam. When 32 bison lumbered across a fence that separated their owners' vast, wind-swept expanse of land from a neighboring ranch in March, they ended up dead. Some fell where they were shot. Others scattered, galloping for miles before they succumbed in the snow. They were victims, contend the bison's owners, of a murder plot hatched by the neighbor, a Texan frustrated by what...