People's Exhibit A: Poaching enforcement has weak link
Joseph Walker Benton is the kind of young man who makes honest watermen cringe and the rest of us wonder what the heck is wrong with Maryland's legal system.
On March 19, at 1 a.m.--yes, an hour past midnight--Natural Resources Police officers watched the 21-year-old Centreville man steer his darkened boat into the Sawmill oyster sanctuary in Prospect Bay and begin dredging for oysters.
NRP had gotten a tip the previous evening from a legitimate waterman and knew just where to set up shop. Benton was already under investigation for oystering without a license and presenting an invalid license to an officer on March 3.
Officers intercepted Benton's boat in the Kent Narrows harbor, confiscated five and a half bushels of oysters and returned them to the sanctuary.
Benton was ordered to appear in Queen Anne's District Court on June 8 to answer the charges of removing oysters from an oyster sanctuary, operating a vessel without navigational lights, possessing oysters on a vessel more than two hours after sunset and two counts of catching oysters without a commercial license.
To his credit, he showed up. Unfortunately, justice did not.
The Queen Anne's prosecutor declined to pursue one licensing violation and the charge of dredging after hours. Benton paid a $650 fine on the other license violation. The judge fined the faux waterman $1,000 for stealing oysters from a sanctuary, but deferred payment.
Benton got to keep his boat and dredging equipment. He didn't lose his license because he never had one to begin with. He lost the oysters taken during his last night on the water, but presumably made some money on the ones he dredged on his previous outing, enough to ease the sting of his $650 fine.
An honest waterman took a leap of faith and called the cops, no doubt hoping to remove a bad actor from the water and to help restore the reputation of his profession.
NRP officers went out on a cold March night to keep their part of the deal.
It fell to a prosecutor to make it stick.
In this case, two out of three ain't good enough.
Comments
Name the prosecutor; let's hear why they think this doesn't merit prosecution
Posted by: david g | June 29, 2011 11:44 AM
Obviously this scumball deserved a much harsher penalty. We spend billions to save the bay and then let scum like this walk.
Posted by: Leon | June 29, 2011 12:05 PM
Candy is dead on with this one. But then again she always is. As long as they got the good ole boy poaching network on the eastern shore, there will never be justice. BTW- she mentioned law abiding watermen in her article. I still to this day have never met one.
Posted by: Shoot Str8 | June 29, 2011 1:34 PM
They should move all poaching cases from the shore county courts to ones more inland on the western shore. Reason for it is, the eastern shore states attorny's offices are unwilling to prosecute waterman or people from that community for fear they won't get reelected.
Posted by: Scott Ainsworth | July 5, 2011 9:40 PM
I get so frustrated by reading these stories that I can only check in to this blog every other week or so and everytime I see one of these stories I send a link to my delegates and state senator.
Unfortunately, they must all be 'on vacation' because I haven't had an answer from any of them since March.
Sad but true and so typically Maryland too.
Posted by: Ed Dorsch | July 6, 2011 11:59 PM