A Little Rock man on Thursday pleaded guilty to night hunting, a week after he challenged the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission's authority to impose criminal penalties on people who break its rules.
Gary Franklin Ingle pleaded guilty to the violation in exchange for a $1,000 fine.
The case had come before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims because Ingle had appealed his district court conviction for the infraction in May when he had been fined $1,500.
"Did you get anything worth keeping?" Sims asked Ingle.
"I didn't shoot, your honor," Ingle replied.
Night hunting is a Class 4 violation of commission regulations that carries a potential six-month jail sentence.
It is the agency's most severe penalty and, up until June 2015 when the commission overhauled its regulations, carried a maximum sentence of four years in prison.
Night hunting is banned in Arkansas, with some seasonal exceptions for bobcats, raccoons, opossums, bullfrogs and alligators.
Ingle's plea has the effect of withdrawing from the judge's consideration the constitutional challenge to the commission's ability to jail rule breakers.
He had asked Sims to rule that the commission had no legal authority to jail anyone. The only branch of government with the authority to set criminal penalties is the Arkansas General Assembly, his attorney, Robbie Golden, said.
Golden told the judge that Amendment 88, which guarantees Arkansans the right to hunt and fish, means that the commission must change the manner in which its members craft and implement agency regulations.
The commission is empowered by its own older constitutional amendment, but Golden said that power was blunted by the newer amendment, even though Amendment 88 purports to recognize the agency's regulatory authority.
According to an arrest report, in November 2015, game wardens had been investigating a complaint about someone night hunting at the River Valley Marina from an empty trailer at the rear of the property.
Ingle was arrested around midnight Nov. 26, 2015, a week after the complaint by wildlife officers Adam Baker and David Freyaldenhoven, who had been staking out the trailer using night vision equipment.
There was scattered corn around the front of the trailer window and on the road in front of the trailer, with some of the corn in piles, an arrest report said.
The occupant of the trailer, Wayne Devon, told the officers he placed the corn to bait deer.
Ingle was dressed in camouflage when they approached him, and he was carrying a crossbow, a bar stool and binoculars.
He denied that he had been hunting, telling the game wardens that he had come to pick up a crossbow that had been left there by a friend and had been watching deer.
Ingle has a "long history of Game & Fish violations," including a road-hunting infraction, the report said.
Metro on 02/10/2017