The owner of Hood River Juice has asked a court to toss out pollution charges against him because of “government misconduct” in prosecuting the case, an allegation that turns in part on the role played by Brent Foster, former Oregon special counsel for the environment.
This is not just misconduct, but damn near a conspiracy on the part of an overzealous AG John Kroger against the business owner. The fact that his (Kroger) special counsel had to resign because of his lies about this case, should be reason enough to drop the charges.
The motion notes that Foster denied taking a water sample last fall near the juice plant that showed extraordinarily high pollution levels, even though he had taken it. The sample result led to a raid on Hood River Juice in October and the arrest of owner David B. Ryan.
Foster, once one of Oregon’s top environmental activists, resigned as Kroger’s special counsel for environmental matters on April 20 because of his misrepresentation to other Department of Justice attorneys.
Defense attorney David Angeli’s motion, filed Monday in Hood River County circuit court, also accuses a Hood River prosecutor and an Oregon State Police investigator of not disclosing follow-up testing that showed much lower pollution levels when the investigator filed a search warrant affidavit.
State environmental regulators say it’s not unusual to have a spike in pollution that doesn’t show up in subsequent testing. Prosecutor Kate Stebbins has said she believed the affidavit was “100 percent accurate” when it was filed.
Prosecutors are pursuing the case against Ryan based on other water samples, along with an earlier criminal case that Angeli’s motion also addresses. At Kroger’s request, a Marion County grand jury is looking into Foster’s involvement in the sampling.
Update from an alert reader; Check Moocounty news HERE and HERE.
