Stolen Petroglyphs

USA Today brings us the sad news that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has thrown out the convictions of a Reno man and a co-defendant who stole this beautiful petroglyph from the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. Government prosecutors proved that the men took the boulders containing the petroglyph from USFS land, but the 9th Circuit threw out the Antiquities Act violation saying that the prosecutors failed to prove that the defendants knew or should have known that they were stealing something of archaeological value.

RTWT. As one of the commenters from the government said, this is an impossible standard of proof. "Essentially the government must prove the defendant knew this was an archaeological resource and knew the actual scientific benefit — which essentially says only archaeological scientists could be convicted in such a case."

The bedrock of protection for archaeological resources on public land in this country is the Antiquities Act of 1906 as amended by the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 (ARPA). The ARPA definition of resources is:

The term "archaeological resource" means any material remains of past human life or activities which are of archaeological interest, as determined under the uniform regulations promulgated pursuant to this Act. Such regulations containing such determination shall include, but not be limited to: pottery, basketry, bottles, weapons, weapon projectiles, tools, structures or portions of structures, pit houses, rock paintings, rock carvings, intaglios, graves, human skeletal materials, or any portion or piece of any of the foregoing items.

That sounds pretty plain to me, but often common sense and the law don't seem to intersect. The 9th Circuit is known for goofy rulings, after all, it's in California, but this is nonsense.

The only saving thing in this case is that the fellows are still guilty of stealing government property.