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.
the lawyers get to pace and walk and show exhibits and things. and then we had the prosecution, which at times had two or three lawyers. on our side, there was a lawyer for each defendant, so there were six lawyers, and five defendants. the sixth defendant, of course, being the black hills institute. our trial was, and still is, the largest criminal case that s ever been tried in south dakota. you cannot say the word sue in the trial. the jurors were going, what happened to sue? that s why they got these guys in the court system, right? the logistics of this trial were incomprehensible. the institute has collected maybe a million fossils. this indictment covers 14 of them and those 14 fossils were collected from seven sites, in seven cases, in all the years these guys have been out in the
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chance that this case would settle before trial. by late summer 94, there were serious discussions that were going on with the u.s. attorneys office for a possible resolution. i go out on my step one morning and bring the rapid city journal in and have a cup of coffee and right on the front page it says, plea agreement announced. somebody spilled their guts in front of hugo guerra, and he might as well have taken a gun and shot us. the article itself suggested capitulation on the part of the government. you never get a good deal done if somebody s going to be cast as having folded the tent. anybody who published that should know better. so i called hugh o gara and i just said, what were you thinking? how could you do that? and he was near tears on the phone. he would not answer me. hugh obviously would not tell me who that source was. i wouldn t even ask him. the next morning, the judge called the attorneys into chambers.
and the black hills institute as a corporation is convicted of two misdemeanor thefts, a felony theft, and twice making false statements to customs officials. they also found them guilty of bringing goods into the states by making a false statement. defendant eddie coals and terry wince were not convicted on any charges. as the verdict was announced, it was almost impossible to believe that the defense had scored a great victory. however, there were some fairly significant felony convictions. the expression, you could have knocked me over with a feather, you could have knocked me over with a feather. i talked to some jurors after the trial. some of them were near tears when i interviewed them about how they had hoped they could acquit on every single charge. i believe they had to have something to take this to trial, and i spent the whole trial waiting for that something. without a doubt, the majority of