The last poacher from the massive gill net poaching of Striped Bass from Chesapeake Bay back in 2011 has been sentenced to 18 months. It was the most severe sentence meted out to any of the four people charged, with an added aggravating obstruction of justice:
A Tighman Island waterman indicted in a massive federal poaching case was sentenced Friday to 18 months in prison — the harshest of four watermen sentenced in the case.
Prosecutors called Michael Hayden “the most culpable member of the conspiracy” in which four Eastern Shore fishermen netted more than 185,000 pounds of striped bass worth nearly half a million dollars over four years.
Hayden pleaded guilty last summer to violating the federal Lacey Act, which prohibits the sale of illegally caught fish across state lines. He and William Lednum, who in January was sentenced to a year and a day in prison, illegally anchored gill nets in the water when the season was closed and left them to net huge quantities of illegal fish. They then falsified their daily allocation and permit paperwork that the Department of Natural Resources requires. To further conceal their crimes, they sold the fish directly to wholesalers in other states, circumventing fish-checking stations and mandatory harvest reports.
“It was massive. It went on for years. It coincided with a decline in striped bass. It covered numerous violations of natural resources laws,” said federal prosecutor Todd Gleason. “The government needs to address the defendant’s culpability, because this is a defendant that, to this day, doesn’t get the message. He just doesn’t get it.”
But he'll have some opportunity to consider it.
A fourth, former seafood dealer Jeffrey Morris, testified that Hayden called him after Morris received a grand jury subpoena. Morris said Hayden told him that he knew Morris had “rolled.”
“He said that he knew something or other, and that he would get me,” Morris said. “I told my wife and daughter not to stay in the house that night.”
The judge dismissed the two officers and Sadler’s claims, saying that a defendant encouraging others not to talk or generally being belligerent in the arrest process did not meet the definition of obstruction. But he said he found Morris’ complaints credible. For that reason, the judge tacked six months onto Hayden’s sentence, while giving him the same time for the poaching crime as he gave Lednum.
It's been a long time coming, but it's likely to make a significant impact in the waterman community, whose motto over the years has been summed up as "We's owed them fish."
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