Following a bench trial Friday morning, Raleigh County Magistrate Rick Jones found Adam Pauley guilty of misdemeanor assault for threatening to cut the throat of a mother and her child at Larry Gibson’s 2009 Fourth of July gathering of family and anti-MTR activists on Kayford Mountain. In the same sentence finding Pauley guilty, Jones imposed a $100 fine and placed Pauley on six months unsupervised probation, which he noted will extend through 2010’s Fourth of July event.
Was it worth the time and effort of Larry and his friends to obtain a sentence which on its face appears to be fairly paltry; particularly where Pauley offered to plead guilty to the charge before trial, conditioned on the imposition of the same punishment? Larry and those with him Friday believe the answer to that question is yes. Why?
There is a broad perception among anti-MTR advocates that the judicial system is stacked solidly against them. The harsh bail terms and sentences passed out to Ground Zero’s tree-top activists, and the ongoing trespassing trial before newly-appointed US District Judge Irene Berger, have convinced some that there is a clear double standard in effect: outrageous crimes against the environment are routinely discounted if not disregarded entirely, while plainly innocuous tree-top political theatre receives the full brunt of the law. So why isn’t a $100 fine, plus probation, for a crime of violence simply more of the same?
Because the outcome – although obvious to anyone of the 50,000+ people who have viewed the youtube.com/ video (enter search term “Kayford Mountain”) of Pauley’s assault on the Fourth of July – was not by any means a given in a courtroom in the middle of the coal fields.
First, it took the State Police two months to bring the charges, and the Trooper who testified at Friday’s trial stated that he was ordered by his superiors to file the complaint (the Trooper earlier told Larry that he thought the Kayford Mountain gatherings were a “set up” for Pauley and others who have been charged with violence).
Second, the prosecutor had not subpoenaed a single witness for the trial. Not the videographer who made the youtube video; not the woman whose life was threatened; not Larry Gibson. No one.
Third, not a single journalist appeared (although many were present for a December hearing). Larry showed up on his own, as did “Christians for the Mountains” activist, Sage Russo, and OHVEC’s Dianne Brady.
Fourth, entering the Magistrate Court annex building, Larry was subjected to an unnecessarily tactile bodily search by the officer in charge, clearly and openly hostile to Larry (who can’t be missed in his fluorescent yellow anti-MTR hat and jacket). The same officer couldn’t manage to look Larry’s lawyer (yes, briefcase, blue suit, tie, overcoat), in the eye. And, on entering the court room, Pauley’s defense counsel tried to fix the parameters of the role Larry Gibson’s private lawyer expected to play in the criminal proceedings. Response: “When I need your advice on how to practice law, I’ll ask for it.”
Fifth, in his opening testimony, Larry Gibson initially was reluctant to testify that Pauley had “placed him in reasonable apprehension of serious bodily injury” – a finding necessary to sustain the charge of assault – because he simply didn’t want to admit he was afraid; call it testosterone-driven testimony.
But the tenor of the trial changed, when Pauley -- who exercised his right under the Fifth Amendment not to testify -- made contemptuous sneering smiles, stopping just short of audible laughter, as Larry testified. Magistrate Jones abruptly interrupted the proceedings and advised Pauley that if he didn’t conduct himself properly he would be removed from the trial. Surprised, Pauley straightened up, but too late to affect his trial’s outcome.
After the unedited youtube video (with less than perfect audio) played, Pauley’s defense counsel renewed a motion to exclude it from evidence, lamely arguing that Pauley’s gesture of pulling his finger across his throat, while yelling at a woman, could have been an innocent directive to stop talking.
Enter the testosterone-free testimony of Sage Russo, who calmly recounted that he was close enough to Pauley to hear him say he’d cut the woman’s throat and her baby’s throat, close enough to observe the father come take the baby out of the mother’s arms and retreat away from Pauley, and observant enough to testify that some people actually ran away from Pauley and his entourage. Pauley was toast.
Pressed by defense counsel as to why Russo didn’t run if Pauley was really all that scary, Russo testified that his extensive training in non-violence and peace-keeping had taught him to maintain a distance but never to run, even when threatened with violence, as he was.
At the end of the trial, Magistrate Jones did not hand wring over a verdict. Making indirect reference to the MTR dispute as the “ongoing matters in western Raleigh County,” Jones said the merits of that debate had nothing to do with the issues before him -- “People have a right to come together peacefully regardless of their views” – and pronounced Pauley guilty of assault.
The message was unambiguous and important: don’t count on judges whom you may think share your political views to bail you out of criminal conduct. The sentence imposed may be viewed as light by some, but would not have been unusual for virtually any other first offense, where no one was physically injured. To that extent, it underscored the broader principle that led to the finding of guilt, and reaffirmed concretely the overriding principle of our jurisprudence -- equal justice under law. That was the saving grace of Friday’s trial.