as the defense proceeded to present many fewer witnesses, to say, look, it s not that complicated, we were collecting fossils, we thought we would permission to be there. in this case, we weren t where you thought we were, in this case we were, it s that simple. as we were approaching the end of the trial, neal and i both felt that it was important for him to testify. 3 1/2 days, i was on the witness stand. and for 3 1/2 days, i swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me god. pete ended up not testifying. the state had not proven its case. the state doesn t prove your case, your client doesn t take the stand, period. and so on the advice of counsel, i did not testify.
well, it took me a day to get everything ready, and i came up, and i got up there with all these materials, and he took me over to this big cliff, and he said, take a look. and i looked at it, and i looked at him. i said, is that t-rex? he said, yes, and i think it s all here. and we haven t started digging or haven t moved anything around yet. we ve just been looking at it and taking some pictures and trying to figure out how to proceed. there s a real mass of bones here. some are caught up in concretion, but most appear to be really excellently preserved. and i believe that the tail s going that way and the skull is going this way, but we re just going to have to dig it up and see. collecting fossils is something that s very timely. fossils are discovered because they re weathering out, because the forces of nature, rain, winds, freezing, thawing, even snowfall, have an effect on that fossil. every day that it s outside is a day that it s going to destruction. we started by p
as the defense proceeded to present many fewer witnesses, to say, look, it s not that complicated, we were collecting fossils, we thought we would permission to be there. in this case, we weren t where you thought we were, in this case, we were, it s that simple. as we were approaching the end of the trial, neil and i both felt that it was important for him to testify. 3 1/2 days, i was on the witness stand. and for 3 1/2 days, i swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me god. pete ended up not testifying. the state had not proven its case. the state doesn t prove your case, your client doesn t take the stand, period. and so on the advice of counsel, i did not testify.
today s indictment. what activity are we talking about? this indictment charges the theft of fossils off a number of different types of federal land. there are also charges in there that pertain to money laundering, structuring of currency transactions, false statements made to various government agencies. the indictments were an avalanche of charges. it was just a massive document, and it looked like a deathblow to the institute. the government just went nuts or something. i mean, i guess they just threw everything in and hoped something would stick. if you add up the time served for each of those offenses is 353 year for me, which is longer than jeffrey dahmer was sentenced for, and he killed people. it doesn t make sense. a lot of these accusations are things that we know were legal. 38 felony indictments for collecting fossils?
this indictment charges the theft of fossils off of a number of different types of federal land. there are also charges in there that pertain to money laundering, structuring of currency transactions, false statements made to various government agencies. the indictments were an avalanche of charges. and it was just a massive document and it looked like a death blow to the institute. the government went just nuts or something, you know? i guess they just threw everything in and hoped something would stick. if you add up the time served for each of those counts, it comes to 353 years for me, which is longer than jeffrey dahmer was sentenced to prison for. and he killed and ate like 13 people. you know, it doesn t make sense. why do these accusations or things that we were were legal 38 felony indictments, for collecting fossils? it totally blew me apart.