Montana Man Pleads to Federal Charges for Efforts to Create Giant Hybrid Sheep
justice.gov
justice.gov
Has anyone found pics of "Montana Mountain King"?
Kill a guy, that's 10 years.
Yeah seems like a totally rational and not depraved punishment system.
Edit: https://web.archive.org/web/20240114090811/https://www.popeh...
But anyway, it's not like I wasn't saying people don't get sentenced to 10 years for murder, so don't act like you got me in some kind of internet gotcha. I wanted to know what nuance – i.e. plea deals, details of the crime – you had left out, because you were trying to conflate the sentencing of some guy trafficking wildlife with the sentencing of murderers, as if either of these things has any bearing on or relevance to the other.
Lmfao.
https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/2023-guidelines-manual/annot...
First degree murder is a base offense level 43. Here is the sentencing table:
https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/2023-guidelines-manual/annot...
You can see way at the bottom of the table that offense level 43 is life in prison even with no criminal history.
Even second degree murder is a base offense level 38, which is 19.5-24.4 years with no criminal history, or up to 30 years to life with criminal history.
If you mean “no one will get that much for any criminal homicide”, you are wrong.
But if instead you mean “no one will get that little for any criminal homicide”, you are also wrong, as involuntary manslaughter has a statutory maximum, forget even the guidelines ranges, of less than that.
For the Lacey Act:
> For an individual, the criminal penalties are not more than 1 year in prison and a fine of $100,000 or twice the gross gain or loss. For a corporation the criminal penalties are not more than 5 years of probation and fine of $200,000 or twice the gross gain or loss. Restitution and forfeitures may also be imposed.
> If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years,
So, I don't understand where either you or OP are coming from. The intention is to paint the government as the irrational Bogeyman who's going to lock you up and throw away the keys when you 'lie about some animals', the same as when you kill a person. This is not correct, unless if you take the maximum for violating the Lacey Act and the minimum for manslaughter, basically using the extremes and calling it normal. Like some sort of 'Appeal to Extremes' fallacy.
So, to recap, OP said:
> You lied about the type of sheep you're bringing in? 5 years by 2 counts.
Wrong. It's 'no more than 5 years'. You really need to be on the far end of the spectrum to get the maximum sentence for something like this, which is usually punished by a fine + probation.
> Kill a guy, that's 10 years.
Wrong again, the minimum bar for killing a person is involuntary manslaughter which has a minimum of 10-month imprisonment (so there's no probation in the guidelines, it's a minimum imprisonment sentence) and a maximum of 8 years. If we're talking about murder in the first degree, then it's either life in prison or capital punishment.
The rationale here seems to be that if we give a large enough entity enough leeway with the lives of its constituents, then anything less than the extremes of punishment is necessarily morally righteous because they were not the subject of the minimum or maximum punishment - punishment that the large-enough-entity was indeed capable of giving them because of that leeway - but kind enough instead to apply "the law" which necessitates punishment somewhere between the extremes.
Which is exactly the point of "guidelines" being super high in the first place - so that you can be a subject of anything in-between the floor and the worst imaginable, and people can turn around and feel just about it, because they are not its subject.
My point is no one should be seeing even a year in prison as their punishment for essentially smuggling sheep, it has nothing to do with federal sentencing guidelines, the argument is from a moral perspective - it biases the punishment upwards and then allows the court to assert any fine or damages below that amount but vastly above what it would be if the maximum was not five years per count.
i make about 800 lbs of meat to do for about 7 months of winter.
See, for example, emerald ash borers.
* Spreading diseases
* Introducing an invasive species to a vulnerable environment
* Encouraging expanded trade in endangered species (gets more people interested, which causes them to go extinct faster)
Not to mention the fraud he committed in order to import in the first place.
Look at what kudzu is doing to the South or invasive Asian carp are doing to midwest waterways to get a sense of why that is an absolutely batshit insane thing to do and why it should be massively illegal. Invasive species are like biological weapons of massive destruction. Their potential blast radius is damn near infinite.
- "I myself have seen the fleece upon the living animal dyed purple, scarlet, and violet,—a pound and a half of dye being used for each,—just as though they had been produced by Nature in this form, to meet the demands of luxury."
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/60230/pg60230-images.ht...
2 counts at up to 5 years each; dude is 80 now...
Would it be legal to synthesize* i.e. extinct mammoths from paleontological DNA samples? Would it make a difference which part of the globe the mammoth samples were found in?
*(I don't know what the correct terminology is)
Pay attention to the wording here. The charges aren't about the hybrid per-se, they're about wildlife trafficking.
This crime had no such direct victims. The two are not very comparable IMO.
Who is the victim in this situation? What actual harm was done?
He didn’t import an invasive species, he imported PARTS.
I do not see any victims of his actions.
Also this is for a wild game ranch, for hunting. These ranches have extra high fences that surround the entire property to keep all the animals contained. Even if he did import the whole sheep, he has a strong economic incentive to contain them.
This exact thing is perfectly legal in Texas, happens all the time, and causes no problems.
I watched that movie!
"It's OK, I killed the endangered animal first!" isn't likely to be a successful defense argument.
> I do not see any victims of his actions.
As with drunk driving, you are not required to; we're allowed to act before widespread ecological disaster ensues.
> This exact thing is perfectly legal in Texas, happens all the time, and causes no problems.
The Endangered Species Act applies in Texas too.
Yes, in order to clone DNA from them in order to breed hybrid animals. Did you not read the article?
> I do not see any victims of his actions.
It's generally better to prevent a catastrophe than to wait for one to roll around and harm a bunch of people before you take action.
> The Lacey Act prohibits interstate trade in wildlife that has been taken, possessed, transported or sold in violation of federal or state law. The Lacey Act also prohibits the interstate sale of wildlife that has been falsely labeled. The Act is one of the most powerful tools the United States has to combat wildlife trafficking and prevent ecological invasion by injurious wildlife.