Bobby (121553) makes a good point re sides of the story. There
was a very entertaining thread over on bowsite.com on this topic. A poster identifying himself as the Idaho officer posted his version of the story. I wont repeat it here,someone else copied it before the post was deleted and pasted it to one of this site's bowhunting forums. You can find it here:
http://www.huntingnet.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=1320970
Anyone can claim to be anyone online, so I can't say if those posts really came from Mr. Berry or the Idaho officer. The two versions of the event are about as far apart as you can get. Mr. Berry says he didn't tag it, the officer says not only that, he didn't even gut it and appeared to have no intention of doing so.
However,Mr Berry did walk into court and pled guilty. There was a case in Los Angeles were a woman pled guilty and then walked outside and told reporters she wasn't and just pled that way because she felt she had no other choice, no chance of winning. Tried to spin it in her favor. The judge got wind of this and threw out her plea, made her come back to court and say yes, she had in fact committed the crime. Work the media however, but don't claim you lied to the judge.
Not having access to all of the evidence, witness statements, etc., I can't pretend to be a jury member. I do have faith that the justice system gets it right more often than not, though its not perfect. If you accept Mr. Berry's side of the story, maybe he had a smallchance of convincing a jury that he had shot the elk in Montana. If you accept the officer's side of the story, Mr. Berry could've come out a lot worse.