|
|
|
| |
Great Falls Tribune
May 14, 2003
Judge blocks key collie defense testimony
Rulings ban arguments about dogs' pedigrees, kennel in Arizona
By CAROL BRADLEY
Tribune Staff Writer
When she takes the witness stand later this month on charges of cruelty to animals, collie breeder Athena Lethcoe-Harman will be barred from testifying about her dogs' pedigrees, her efforts to weed out a collie eye disease or about the kennel she and her husband built for the dogs at their new home in Arizona.
The Anaconda jury won't be allowed to view the dogs the way the Toole County jury did during Lethcoe-Harman's first trial in January.
Lethcoe-Harman won't even be allowed to bring her service dog, Panache, into the courtroom.
The rulings Monday by Teton County Justice of the Peace Pete Howard represent a significant victory for the prosecution because they eliminate a number of the arguments Lethcoe-Harman's attorney used during the first trial in Shelby.
That trial ended in a mistrial when the six-person jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict.
The retrial gets under way May 27 at the Deer Lodge County Courthouse in Anaconda.
Lethcoe-Harman and her husband, Jon Harman, of Nikiski, Alaska, face 181 counts each of misdemeanor animal cruelty, each of which is punishable by a maximum $500 fine and-or six months in jail.
U.S. Customs inspectors found their tractor trailer full of allegedly emaciated, dehydrated and diseased animals, mostly collies, when the couple tried to cross the border into Montana last Halloween.
Lethcoe-Harman, who is diabetic, had asked to bring to court a service dog she said is capable of warning her when her blood sugar is about to drop. Howard said the defense had presented no evidence of certification and said the dog might disrupt the trial.
He also said no to calling witnesses via an Internet Webcam. Several witnesses testified on the Harmans' behalf over the Webcam during the first trial.
Howard also ruled out any testimony about American Kennel Club penalties. The AKC automatically suspends for 10 years breeders convicted of animal cruelty and fines them $2,000.
The biggest blow to the Harmans was Howard's decision against allowing the jury to view the dogs. Lethcoe-Harman capitalized on the viewing during the first trial to demonstrate her knowledge of and affection for the dogs.
Toole County Attorney Merle Raph and Teton County Attorney Joe Coble argued that letting the jury see the collies would be irrelevant because they look and act much better than the night they were found.
The collies spent six months in a 4-H barn at the fairgrounds outside Shelby before being moved to Great Falls two weeks ago.
More than 100 local residents have volunteered to help feed, water and walk the dogs in their new temporary digs at 4000 River Drive, said Linda Hughes, director of the Cascade County Humane Society.
Great Falls Tribune
Saturday, May 31, 2003
Breeder's husband takes stand; collie trial continues today
By CAROL BRADLEY
Tribune Staff Writer
ANACONDA -- Accused collie abuser Jon Harman of Alaska testified Friday that if he and his wife could have driven their tractor-trailerful of muddy animals through Montana and on to Arizona last Halloween, they could have cleaned the dogs and "made them look like Lassie" in about a month.
But prosecuting attorney Merle Raph of Toole County caught Harman in a number of inconsistencies about the 2,240-mile trip, which culminated in 180 misdemeanor animal-cruelty charges against Harman and his collie breeder wife, Athena Lethcoe-Harman.
The Harmans have pleaded not guilty.
Harman spent nearly five hours on the witness stand as the collie trial entered Day Four. Lethcoe-Harman took the stand late in the afternoon on Friday and returned to it in a rare Saturday session. Presiding Justice of the Peace Pete Howard of Teton County is hoping to hear closing arguments by the end of the day.
Toole County law enforcers arrested them after U.S. Customs inspectors discovered their 18-wheeler full of dehydrated, malnourished, diseased and shivering animals when the couple tried to cross the Canadian border into Montana on Halloween night.
Harman's appearance as a witness surprised courtroom spectators because he did not take the stand during the couple's first trial, in Shelby in January. That trial ended in a mistrial when the six-person Justice Court jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict.
The new trial was moved to Anaconda, Montana to make it easier to find jurors who hadn't already formed an opinion about the case.
Under questioning by defense attorney Scott Albers, Harman, 50, a past president of the Kenai Peninsula Kennel Club, described how he and Lethcoe-Harman spent a solid year of their time and tens of thousands of his $70,000-$80,000 oilfield worker's salary preparing to move their collie kennel from Nikiski, Alaska, to Woodruff, Ariz. The couple wanted to leave Alaska because the dark, damp winters were physically hard on their kennel and psychologically hard on Lethcoe-Harman, Harman said.
He acknowledged that the tires on their truck were in bad shape, that driving conditions were sometimes less than ideal and that the loss of an ambulance and horse trailer filled with supplies to a freak engine fire a couple of days into the trip increased their risks. But he said continuing onward was still better than returning to a flooded Kenai Peninsula or turning the dogs over to a local animal shelter, where he said they would have been euthanized.
"If you went back over the whole trip, can you think of one time that you were negligent?" Albers asked.
He could not, Harman said.
Under cross-examination, Harman appeared ignorant of some of the logistics involved in the trip, such as the number of kennels stacked inside the semi or the number of chain-link fence panels it took to set up temporary pens for the dogs.
He presented a chart indicating that he and his wife stopped to feed, water and exercise the dogs 11 times before their arrest at the Port of Sweet Grass. Pressed by Raph, though, Harman failed to explain why the couple usually stopped between midnight and dawn and why he left his 40-year-old brittle-diabetic wife to feed and water and dogs and clean their kennels while he slept in the cab of the truck.
Earlier, Harman had testified about how Lethcoe-Harman's blood sugar could plummet with little warning and how exercise put her at even greater risk.
"It's dark and cold and she's in the back cleaning while you're sleeping," Raph commented.
Also unexplained was why, after purportedly stopping in Red Deer, Alberta, overnight Oct. 30 to feed the dogs, the Harmans drove through a number of cities in Alberta the following day without stopping to stock up on dog food. The couple rolled into the Port of Sweet Grass at 10:30 p.m. with only a couple of bags of puppy food and have since blamed U.S. Customs inspectors and Toole County sheriff's officials for preventing them from getting their dogs fed.
"Your dogs had already been in the truck for a longer period than at any other time and your plan was to go another couple of hours?" Raph said.
Harman said he and Lethcoe-Harman had argued about whether they should stop and exercise the dogs before reaching the U.S. border -- as Lethcoe-Harman wanted to do -- or cross the border first and then stop at a rest area along I-15 near Dutton. The Dutton rest stop is in a coulee and would provide some protection from the below-zero temperatures, Harman said.
Lethcoe-Harman was recovering from a low-blood sugar episode and he won the argument, he said.
"Where were you going to get food for the Dutton rest stop?" Raph asked.
"In Shelby," Harman replied.
"But you would be coming through Shelby at about midnight" -- too late to buy dog food, Raph pointed out.
Harman could not explain why he was careful enough to keep a logbook of their journey, but not careful enough to keep receipts of dog food purchased along the trip. He produced a handful of receipts that show dates but not items purchased.
He said Lethcoe-Harman insisted on housing each collie in its own individual kennel during the trip, but failed to explain how she was able to separate out the dogs in a darkened 45-foot-long trailer.
Harman disputed a prosecution witness' account of how as many as a dozen of the couple's collies disappeared while the couple's rig was parked in Palmer, Alaska, on Oct. 25. The dogs were all retrieved, Harman said. He said he and his wife exercised the animals at that location from 3:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
The witness, Jay Peterson, whose office was a few feet away from the Harmans' trailer, said only 25 or so dogs were let out for a couple of hours from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. He said the Harmans went looking for the dogs that escaped their pen, but came back empty-handed and drove off between 10 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.
They face a maximum of six months in jail and-or a $500 fine for each count, and could also be required to forfeit their animals and reimburse Toole County for the animals' nearly eight-month care at the Marias fairgrounds.
Great Falls Tribune
Type of evidence, staying on target key to outcome of collie trial
By CAROL BRADLEY
Tribune Staff Writer
When alleged collie abusers Jon and Athena Harman of Alaska went on trial the first time in January, a Toole County Justice Court jury deadlocked on a unanimous verdict; only one of the six jurors thought the couple should be convicted.
On Saturday, a six-member panel from Deer Lodge County unanimously found the Harmans guilty of 180 misdemeanor counts of cruelty each.
Separate juries, granted. But why such opposite outcomes?
Three factors appear to have made a difference: the type of evidence allowed in the courtroom, a sharpened case from the prosecution and a justice of the peace who made certain the trial stayed on target.
"Both times we tried the best case we could," is all assisting prosecutor Joe Coble of Teton County would say about the contrasting verdicts as jurors and spectators filed out of the Deer Lodge County courthouse Saturday night. Defense attorney Scott Albers declined to comment.
Animal lovers from across the United States have followed the case of collie breeders Jon Harman and Athena Lethcoe-Harman. They were arrested at the Port of Sweet Grass Nov. 1 when they tried to cross into the United States with a tractor trailer full of 170 dogs, mostly collies, and 10 cats authorities described as dehydrated, emaciated, diseased and shivering. One dog was dead.
The Harmans each were charged with 180 counts of cruelty to animals. They pleaded not guilty.
The first trial lasted seven days, partly because the Harmans' defense attorney, Scott Albers, focused much of his case on Lethcoe-Harman's show-dog record and her attempts to weed out a disease called Collie Eye Anomaly -- evidence, he claimed, that made her the last person on earth capable of inflicting abuse and neglect on her animals.
Albers summoned several defense witnesses who appeared via Internet Webcam, a cumbersome apparatus that enabled witnesses from as far away as Anchorage and Holland to testify.
The defense won a major victory when the judge in that case, Toole County Justice of the Peace Janice Freeland, allowed Albers to take the jury to "Camp Collie" in Shelby, where the animals were being housed. Lethcoe-Harman used the occasion to stop at each pen and talk in loving terms about her animals.
Not this time
The new judge, Teton County Justice of the Peace Pete Howard, ruled out all of that.
There would be no testimony about the collies' pedigrees, Howard said, although Lethcoe-Harman managed to allude to her trophies several times during last week's proceedings.
Howard also vetoed any discussion of Collie Eye Anamoly, said no to Webcam appearances and turned thumbs down to a jury visit to Camp Collie, which has since relocated to Great Falls. The collies aren't the same animals they were the day they were carried off the semi, prosecutors had argued.
Stricter bench
The wiry former sheriff took over the case after Freeland recused herself in the wake of the mistrial. Howard ruled the proceedings much more firmly, nudging lawyers along when they deviated from the subject and refusing to let extraneous information seep in.
One example: In the first trial, Freeland permitted Albers to question Lethcoe-Harman at length about her parents' Ph.Ds and the time they spent teaching at Stanford University. When Albers tried to go there last week, Howard stopped him in mid-sentence.
Prosecutors -- who had thought a conviction would be a slam-dunk -- learned a few lessons from the first trial. The second time around they had witnesses describe in much greater detail the horrendous conditions they found the Harmans' animals in. The prosecution blew up photos to 8 x 10s, including a picture of the dog that died en route. Witnesses emphasized repeatedly that the pictures failed to convey adequately the miserable conditions the animals were forced to endure.
Toole County Sheriff Donna Matoon freed up Deputy Mike Lamey to work full time amassing evidence and it paid off, said Toole County Attorney Merle Raph, the chief prosecutor. Lamey unearthed several new witnesses who had encountered the Harmans not at the end of their journey but at the beginning and could attest to the bad condition of their rig.
Among the new witnesses was Jay Peterson, a truck-driving trainer from Palmer, Alaska, who testified seeing the Harmans drive away in their 18-wheeler even though as many as a dozen of their collies had escaped an hour and a half earlier into a wooded area near some railroad tracks and a busy highway.
Defense works hard
Albers did his best to overcome the new rules of the game. Unable to show Lethcoe-Harman amongst her collies, he had her stand three feet from the jury and describe the characteristics and personalities of roughly 80 of the dogs. The exercise also gave Lethcoe-Harman the chance to argue why veterinarians' comments about the animals -- words like "emaciated" or "high strung" -- were off-base.
Prosecutors fought back by hammering the Harmans on the logistics of their road trip, questioning how Lethco-Harman, a brittle diabetic, could possibly help set up 70- to 90- pound fence panels, then let out 170 animals in pitch darkness for hours on end while her husband slept in the truck, as she claimed to do.
Lethcoe-Harman grew visibly flustered by the line of questioning as did her husband, who appeared several times on the verge of losing his temper on the stand.
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
