1st amendment to be null and void in Wyoming (2015, crime)

[verybadgnome]

Wow, this is the stupidest law since prohibition.

Legal exposure: Wyoming law could mean jail for sunset picture, claims critic | Fox News

[GregW]

The primary question is: Do the land owners own the land under the rivers or under the places where the evidence is collected or the picture is taken?

IMHO every citizen has both the right not only to report a crime but to actually stop a crime in progress. Just because a land owner illegally contaminating a neighbor's or public property would prefer not to be caught does not justify preventing a free citizen from doing their civic duty in preventing criminal activity by investigating and/or photographing the crime.

I can only hope someone is able (ALCU perhaps) to afford to take this absurd restriction on civic duty to the Supreme Court where it should be eliminated.

IMHO - If a business entity such as a farm, ranch, industry or mine cannot remain in business because the cost of cleaning up their act would cost too much they should stop doing business. Why should they be able to dump the costs of their environmental crimes on the public? Let them cleanup their own mess.

[jody_wy]

You have a environmental group with no grass root members , who's money comes from a few large founders. This group has one employee in the state, that caused the problem for which the law was pasted. Trespass is trespass taking pictures in Yellowstone is not trespass, now if you going to sell the pictures the park has it own rules on that.
But here you have a group who mission statement is pretty clear what they want , so any evidence they bring should be suspect. Like the pole mountain case, water samples taken by the conservation district proved the samples of the environmental group wrong.
What the defiance of open land vs some one breaking into you garage to look for oil leaks.... or maybe even your bed room where in some state some acts are illegal.

[jody_wy]

e-coli comes from cows, sheep,WILDLIFE, people, dogs, poor septic systems

[Rescue3]

Boy, that is a poorly written statute. I can see parts of it being overturned at the trial court level, let alone the appellate level.

Right from jump street, if the land is solely federal jurisdiction, Wyoming statutes would not apply. If it is joint jurisdiction, the Wyoming statute would apply. How is a citizen supposed to know the difference?

Taking a photograph of a sample (like an oil spill) from outside the boundary of a property is not legal under this law, but is legal under the 'plain view' doctrine upheld by the SCOTUS.

The law also requires that the data sample "is to be submitted or intended to be submitted to any agency of the state or federal government." Apparently, you CAN collect the sample/evidence/data and send it to a private lab...(?)

This is headed for an appeals court, and (IMHO) properly so.

[GregW]

There is a similar case in West Virginia where a private entity too samples from the cooling water canal of a abandoned Duke Power coal fired power plant. A local cop chased them off even though they had every right to be in the canal. Later that same group took incriminating pictures from a small aircraft of the power company employees using a portable pump to pump heavily contaminated water from a fly ash holding pond into the same public waterway. That little piece of criminality cost the power company a lot of money in fines.

I can see where rural commercial interests want to prevent anyone from "trespassing" on "their" property to collect evidence of criminal activities. Would they prefer to have the investigation done by the State Police? I suspect they know that will never happen because they own the justice system so such a warrant would never be issued. I guess they and the justice system would object even more to a Federal Investigation or do they own the local FBI as well?

After all Wyoming is a heavily Republican State with a well deserved reputation for government corruption by the agricultural, energy and mining companies.

[jody_wy]

Scientists, researchers concerned by new Wyoming law
Moline said trespass laws weren’t tough enough until now.
“Previously, the burden was on the landowner to prove they haven’t given notice that (it is trespassing),” he said. “So what this bill does is it requires the people collecting data to know where they are … and with technology available, it is quite easy.”
Moline added that Pidot’s claim that someone taking pictures at a national park could potentially be guilty of violating the law is “misleading.”

The law makes it a misdemeanor crime to enter open land with the intent of collecting resource data -- including photographs or soil, water and air samples -- if there is no statutory, contractual or legal authorization or permission from the owner to collect the specified resource data.
It additionally creates a crime of “unlawfully collecting resource data” if a person enters private land and collects the data without authorization or permission.

we require hunter to know where they are so why not everybody else?

[jody_wy]

what caused it all!!!!
Landowners sometimes find themselves in disagreement with those who wander through private lands. In recent years, this disagreement has taken on a whole new meaning with individuals working for entities gathering data with remote sensing or onsite investigations that are trespassing without getting permission with hopes of using that data for their own purposes.
The United States and Wyoming Constitutions hold the ownership and protection of private property, including the right to exclude third parties, in the highest regard. This is a good thing. Regardless whether your private property is your backyard in town or rangeland in the country, trespassing is illegal.
In June 2014, fifteen landowners in Fremont County, Wyoming and Lincoln County, Wyoming filed a civil trespass lawsuit against Western Watersheds Project (WWP) and Jonathan Ratner WWP Director for Wyoming, Utah and Colorado, and John Does 1-10 with the Western Watersheds Project, Inc. for intentionally and without landowner permission trespassing and entering private property. For some of these ranchers this wasn’t a one-time occurrence, but has happened numerous times.
Western Watersheds Project says they can

[jody_wy]

"
Litigation is big business for the environmental organizations, which often use the deadlines in the ESA as leverage to get their way with the government.
Last year alone, they filed 526 environmental lawsuits in federal courts, according to a search of public records. The year before, the number was 1,421."
Environmental groups pose billion-dollar challenge to ag - Capital Press

[branDcalf]

I support private property rights. I support a clean environment.

One does not need to violate the first to work toward the second.