Hung jury can't decide if Everett man poached public timber
GRANITE FALLS — A Snohomish County jury deadlocked on whether an Everett man knew he was poaching timber from public land near Granite Falls, or if he believed a friend who told him, wrongly, that they only needed a Discover Pass to harvest trees.
The two men cut Douglas fir and western hemlock with chainsaws through the night starting at 10:30 p.m. Jan. 3, 2018, eight miles east of Granite Falls, the defendant told a jury Thursday.
The men sawed and stacked logs until 9 a.m., when a state Department of Natural Resources officer stopped them.
One of the men, 31, went on trial last week for theft in the first degree and removing firewood without a license. The jury began deliberating around 11 a.m. Friday.
Superior Court Judge David Kurtz declared a mistrial about four hours later, when the jurors said they couldn’t agree on a verdict. According to the younger man’s testimony, the pair didn’t cut standing trees, but they did slice up uprooted trunks that had fallen.
“Was it alive?” asked his public defender, Tiffany Mecca.
He conceded that yes, it was fair to say the trees were alive, based on earlier testimony of a forester and a DNR officer.
“But to my understanding at the time, I believed it was deadfall,” he said. “I was of the understanding that anything that was uprooted, that didn’t have a chance of surviving, was deadfall.”
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So because he didn't feel he was doing wrong some on the jury couldn't convict him? Laws don't work that way.