Jurors’ Minds Were Clouded By Field Burning

Franklin County farm folk can rest easy now. Justice has spoken, and the message is clear:

Don’t mess with the field burners. Or else!

Jan Tenold and Patricia Hoffman learned this lesson. The two Spokane women were found guilty of second-degree trespassing last month in a Pasco courtroom.

The charge dates to Aug. 7, when the clean-air activists drove Franklin County farm roads to videotape field burning.

Tenold, a Junior Leaguer and Hoffman, a veterinarian, must perform five days of community service and spend a year on probation.

These jurors should judge the next Holyfield-Lewis boxing scam.

Tenold and Hoffman are no criminals. They went to Franklin County never intending to intrude on anyone’s property rights. They were making a video for Save Our Summers, a citizens group opposed to open field burning.

But the paranoid farmers they butted heads with wield considerable power. They wanted Tenold and Hoffman charged and prosecuted. As usual, they got their way.

This is one arrogant bunch.

One day during the trial, about 30 farmers and their pals packed the Pasco courtroom. They glared at Tom Bailie, a Mesa wheat and sugar beet farmer who dared testify on behalf of the women.

Bailie was also charged with trespassing. He drove onto a chunk of a neighbor’s field while chauffeuring Tenold and Hoffman for part of their journey.

His payback came Wednesday afternoon.

Rather than fight any more, Bailie pleaded guilty and took his lumps: a $200 fine, an 87-day suspended sentence, three days’ community service and a year’s probation.

In exchange, prosecutors dropped a charge of unlawfully displaying a firearm.

That happened two weeks after the Tenold-Hoffman incident. Bailie allegedly brandished the weapon during a heated encounter with one of the hothead farmers.

As ridiculous as it sounds, this dispute over burning fields could easily explode into violence.

It’s all about money and greed. Burning fields is the cheapest way to clear stubble and ready a field for next year’s crop.

So what if it stinks up the skies with choking soot.

Bailie’s support of Tenold and Hoffman has made him an outcast in the community he grew up in. The mere mention of his name Tuesday during a telephone call to Mesa’s Great Basin Seed company evoked the following response:

“I’d steer away from the guy,” advised an unnamed worker who answered the phone. “No one trusts him around here. He’s not a criminal, but he’s the next best thing to it.”

On Aug. 7, Bailie was trying to teach Tenold and Hoffman how to distinguish a bluegrass field from a wheat field. He pulled Tenold’s car onto a chunk of a neighbor’s land.

You would have thought the Japanese had invaded Pearl Harbor again.

Tenold and Hoffman say a farmer named Kevin Heinen roared up in his truck, began swearing and tried to take Tenold’s camera. Heinen, who owns Great Basin Seed, denied in court that he was foul-mouthed or aggressive.

The hubbub escalated as more farmers became involved. Word had spread about the Spokane women after they mistakenly drove down a private road earlier in the day.

Tenold and Hoffman say they were looking at the smoke and didn’t spot a “no trespassing” sign.

Sometime after the second incident, a deputy sheriff arrived and began writing misdemeanor citations.

The women were eventually allowed to pass through the blockade of pickups. Tenold and Hoffman drove home, shaken and looking over their shoulders.

Three days later, some of the same farmers, including Heinen, surrounded and detained two Washington Department of Ecology inspectors who were searching for evidence of illegal field burning near Basin City.

No charges were filed against the bullies.

That’s the way things work in Franklin County.