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Spokane County has reputation for light sentences in game cases


Rich Landers - Outdoors editor

Spokane County appears to be soft on crime involving wildlife.

"If you're going to poach an elk or a moose, do it in Spokane County," said Ray Kahler, retired Department of Fish and Wildlife enforcement agent. "You won't get half the sentence (in this district court that) you'd get in another county."

Kahler contends that even in cases where agents work hard to make good cases, the Spokane County prosecutor's office generally plea bargains greatly reduced penalties to avoid trial.

Occasionally, inexperience with wildlife cases allows violators to get off easier than the law allows.

One of the most disappointing recent incidents, he said, involved a North Idaho hunter who killed a moose on the Washington side of the state line even though he did not have a moose permit for either Idaho or Washington.

After Washington wildlife agents received an anonymous tip and worked with Idaho wildlife agents to secure a search warrant, Richard L. Finch of Rathdrum was charged and found guilty of killing a moose illegally and wasting most of the meat.

He received a total of $750 in fines, but was not ordered to pay the mandatory civil penalty of $4,000 for moose poaching.

Moose are coveted animals in Washington. Hunters who draw either-sex moose permits get only one chance in a lifetime to hunt them in this state.

George Gagnon, Spokane County prosecuting attorney, said he regretted the oversight.

"I had handled the case, but was in another courtroom during sentencing," he said, noting that the other prosecutors and judge were unfamiliar with the civil penalty and forgot to include it.

At that time, he said, "Myself and one other prosecutor had 750 open cases. That's ludicrous. With only three judges and six prosecutors for district court, do the math and figure out how much time we're going to put in on each case."

Nevertheless, before being promoted out of the district court unit, Gagnon said he took an interest in wildlife cases.

He said he worked on his own time to make an elk-hunting violation case involving Spokane hunters Fredrick Lance von Marbod and Rod Hoover.

"There were twists in the case, but it was doable," Gagnon said. "A lot comes down to prioritizing," he added, noting that Spokane-area juries aren't as likely as rural-area juries to find guilty verdicts in hunting and fishing cases.

"I made time on this case," he said, "but in the end, we didn't have the personnel to go after it. It's sad."

"Fish and wildlife crimes are not the crimes of the century, but people are having an impact on our wildlife resources," said Mike Sprecher, the Washington agent who helped make the moose case against Finch.

Sprecher said that since the Finch sentencing oversight, he's been trying to attend as many arraignments as possible. "We as agents have to go in and educate the courts on the importance of wildlife and make sure they understand the civil penalties," he said.

"Sometimes we need to take these people to court. We need to discourage poaching, and the way to do it is with serious fines."