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According to documents obtained by Complete Colorado, a District Court judge has appointed a special prosecutor to “pursue the prosecution of [Department of Natural Resources Director] Mike King for the crime of hunting on private land without permission…”
Complete Colorado was first to break the story that King was cited for “Hunting/Trapping/Fishing without permission” in the fall of 2013. Those charges were later dismissed in February of 2014, but strangely only because it was the District Attorney’s office that filed the motion to dismiss, according to Steamboat Today.
In the document, the judge blasts the acceptance of King’s assertion that he wasn’t aware he was trespassing, and says the ruling to dismiss the charges was “arbitrary and capricious.”
“The only thing required for proof of the commission of the crime is the voluntary act of being present on private land without permission while hunting,” Judge Michael Andrew O’Hara III wrote. “If every person charged with second or third degree trespass could escape liability by simply saying ‘I didn’t know,’ there would be no concept of trespass. Laws protecting private property interests, are, in fact, the sort of laws that protect the security of the State. The alternative is chaos.”
With the order, Judge O’Hara III removes the prosecution from the 14th Judicial District and assigns the case to the District Attorney’s office in the 9th Judicial District.
King Routt County Order 2 27 15 by CompleteColorado
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