the jury came back today in the hill city fossil hunter federal criminal trial. the jury said over and over again either not guilty or no unanimous verdict could be reached. of over 150 charges, the jury agreed to convict only 13 times, and five of those convictions are for misdemeanor crimes. so here is how the convictions break down. pete larson, co-owner and founder of the institute, is convicted on two counts of misdemeanor thefts and two felony counts of illegally transporting money in and out of a country. brother neal larson found guilty of one misdemeanor theft. the jury either acquitted neal or couldn t agree on a verdict for the others. bob farrar, a third co-owner of the institute, convicted of
and show exhibits and things. and then we had the prosecution, which had 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. i mean, 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 field, they are accused of being in the wrong place. the government would simply have their officials come in,
two felonies, making false statements to customs officials. 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. defendants eddie cole and terry wentz were not convicted on any charges. as the verdict was announced, it was almost impossible to believe that the defense hadn t 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 the jurors w
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.
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