Dean Ruth gets prison for poaching
By ROB CHANEY of the Missoulian
Dean and Renita Ruth await sentencing Thursday in District Court in Missoula on charges involving poaching game animals. Dean Ruth was ordered directly to prison for five years and Renita Ruth got a five-year suspended sentence as part of their sentences for possession of illegally taken wildlife.
Photo by TOM BAUER/Missoulian
The jury box was filled with antlers of the animals Dean and Renita Ruth were guilty of illegally killing when they came to learn their sentences Thursday.
"You're not even a slob hunter," Missoula District Judge John Henson told Dean Ruth as he pronounced the sentence. "You're simply a killer of wildlife."
Henson ordered Dean Ruth directly to prison to begin five years of a 20-year sentence on four felony counts of possessing illegally taken wildlife. Fifteen years were suspended.
Dean Ruth also was banned for life from hunting, fishing, possessing any kind of hunting weapon (including bows and black-powder rifles) and even accompanying other hunters.
Renita Ruth got a five-year suspended sentence on one charge of felony possession of illegally taken wildlife and six months suspended on one misdemeanor charge of assisting an unqualified person obtain a Montana hunting license. She and her husband were also ordered to share restitution of $19,300 for 41 illegally killed game animals.
Renita Ruth also had her hunting and fishing privileges suspended for the duration of her sentence.
The Seeley Lake couple was initially charged in state court with a combined 12 felony and 31 misdemeanor charges involving the poaching of game animals over more than a decade. Dean Ruth was also convicted of three federal felony poaching charges last October and one poaching charge in Pennsylvania in April 2003. The charges all stemmed from a search of their Woodworth Road home in November 2002.
Neither of the Ruths made a statement Thursday. But family friends who testified for Dean Ruth claimed he was a talented mechanic and a quiet but generous neighbor.
"It's a shame there's not more people here to back him," said Dominic Casano, who worked with Ruth on excavating jobs. "They didn't know his name."
Game wardens who led the investigation of the Ruths presented a much different impression.
"This was serial poaching," Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Warden Sgt. Joe Jaquith testified at the sentencing hearing. "This was as hardcore as it gets."
Jaquith and Warden Capt. Jeff Darrah told of finding walls covered with antler mounts when they searched the Ruths' trailer home. They also spoke of a shooting table in the Ruths' living room aimed out a window at a field strewn with hay and grain, a rifle with a homemade silencer, and piles of photographs of the Ruths with family and friends displaying trophy kills. The photographs were later matched with many of the antler racks seized in the home search, Jaquith said.
About 20 of those racks, along with the silencer and two of the Ruths' rifles, were on display in the courtroom Thursday.
The Ruths' trailer home sits on a major wildlife corridor between the Blackfoot-Clearwater Wildlife Management Area and the Bob Marshall Wilderness.
The investigation turned up remains of more than 100 trophy-quality deer, elk, moose, bear, antelope and other animals. The wardens also testified about seeing four-wheeler trails leading from the Ruths' home into woods, and vehicles equipped with spotlights for night hunting.
"I would say they've killed several lifetimes' worth of game," Darrah said of the Ruths. "I've only harvested four legal elk in 19 years. Dean Ruth has harvested enough elk for 10 guys' lifetimes."
Dean Ruth's attorney, Dustin Chouinard, pleaded for a suspended sentence for his client because the crimes were considered nonviolent. Keeping him out of prison would also allow Ruth to support his wife and three teenage children, and pay restitution. While the case has been pending, Ruth has completed training to be an arc welder and could earn as much as $26 an hour. The Ruths had been living on about $15,000 a year previously, Chouinard said.
Henson, however, decided to add a personal statement to his judgment describing his disgust with Ruth's actions. He noted that sportsmen's organizations have been working hard to improve the image of hunting, and a poaching case like this reinforces the opinions of hunting opponents.
"You were not killing solely because you needed the meat," Henson said. "You were simply killing for pleasure and for profit. You continue to deny any true accountability or true guilt.
"We have a tradition and a privilege of hunting that's passed from generation to generation," Henson went on. "You have not only violated the rules of the hunt, but these many laws."
Deab Ruth was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs after Henson declared his sentence. His family declined to speak to reporters.
FWP chief of law enforcement Jim Kropp said he was pleased with the sentence.
"We fully concur with the judge's view of this," Kropp said. "Anyone with a passion for wildlife has to consider this a major victory."
By ROB CHANEY of the Missoulian
Dean and Renita Ruth await sentencing Thursday in District Court in Missoula on charges involving poaching game animals. Dean Ruth was ordered directly to prison for five years and Renita Ruth got a five-year suspended sentence as part of their sentences for possession of illegally taken wildlife.
Photo by TOM BAUER/Missoulian
The jury box was filled with antlers of the animals Dean and Renita Ruth were guilty of illegally killing when they came to learn their sentences Thursday.
"You're not even a slob hunter," Missoula District Judge John Henson told Dean Ruth as he pronounced the sentence. "You're simply a killer of wildlife."
Henson ordered Dean Ruth directly to prison to begin five years of a 20-year sentence on four felony counts of possessing illegally taken wildlife. Fifteen years were suspended.
Dean Ruth also was banned for life from hunting, fishing, possessing any kind of hunting weapon (including bows and black-powder rifles) and even accompanying other hunters.
Renita Ruth got a five-year suspended sentence on one charge of felony possession of illegally taken wildlife and six months suspended on one misdemeanor charge of assisting an unqualified person obtain a Montana hunting license. She and her husband were also ordered to share restitution of $19,300 for 41 illegally killed game animals.
Renita Ruth also had her hunting and fishing privileges suspended for the duration of her sentence.
The Seeley Lake couple was initially charged in state court with a combined 12 felony and 31 misdemeanor charges involving the poaching of game animals over more than a decade. Dean Ruth was also convicted of three federal felony poaching charges last October and one poaching charge in Pennsylvania in April 2003. The charges all stemmed from a search of their Woodworth Road home in November 2002.
Neither of the Ruths made a statement Thursday. But family friends who testified for Dean Ruth claimed he was a talented mechanic and a quiet but generous neighbor.
"It's a shame there's not more people here to back him," said Dominic Casano, who worked with Ruth on excavating jobs. "They didn't know his name."
Game wardens who led the investigation of the Ruths presented a much different impression.
"This was serial poaching," Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Warden Sgt. Joe Jaquith testified at the sentencing hearing. "This was as hardcore as it gets."
Jaquith and Warden Capt. Jeff Darrah told of finding walls covered with antler mounts when they searched the Ruths' trailer home. They also spoke of a shooting table in the Ruths' living room aimed out a window at a field strewn with hay and grain, a rifle with a homemade silencer, and piles of photographs of the Ruths with family and friends displaying trophy kills. The photographs were later matched with many of the antler racks seized in the home search, Jaquith said.
About 20 of those racks, along with the silencer and two of the Ruths' rifles, were on display in the courtroom Thursday.
The Ruths' trailer home sits on a major wildlife corridor between the Blackfoot-Clearwater Wildlife Management Area and the Bob Marshall Wilderness.
The investigation turned up remains of more than 100 trophy-quality deer, elk, moose, bear, antelope and other animals. The wardens also testified about seeing four-wheeler trails leading from the Ruths' home into woods, and vehicles equipped with spotlights for night hunting.
"I would say they've killed several lifetimes' worth of game," Darrah said of the Ruths. "I've only harvested four legal elk in 19 years. Dean Ruth has harvested enough elk for 10 guys' lifetimes."
Dean Ruth's attorney, Dustin Chouinard, pleaded for a suspended sentence for his client because the crimes were considered nonviolent. Keeping him out of prison would also allow Ruth to support his wife and three teenage children, and pay restitution. While the case has been pending, Ruth has completed training to be an arc welder and could earn as much as $26 an hour. The Ruths had been living on about $15,000 a year previously, Chouinard said.
Henson, however, decided to add a personal statement to his judgment describing his disgust with Ruth's actions. He noted that sportsmen's organizations have been working hard to improve the image of hunting, and a poaching case like this reinforces the opinions of hunting opponents.
"You were not killing solely because you needed the meat," Henson said. "You were simply killing for pleasure and for profit. You continue to deny any true accountability or true guilt.
"We have a tradition and a privilege of hunting that's passed from generation to generation," Henson went on. "You have not only violated the rules of the hunt, but these many laws."
Deab Ruth was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs after Henson declared his sentence. His family declined to speak to reporters.
FWP chief of law enforcement Jim Kropp said he was pleased with the sentence.
"We fully concur with the judge's view of this," Kropp said. "Anyone with a passion for wildlife has to consider this a major victory."
