Pennsylvania Jails Two Citizens Without Trial

Pennsylvania, the nation’s poster child for dysfunctional government, has put two of its farmers in jail without a court hearing and without an option for bail. There were no campus riots.

On April 10 and 11, dairy farmers Ethan Wentworth of York County and Rusty Herr of Lancaster County were arrested and jailed in their county prisons. They are still in jail.

The arrests were made without a court hearing or trial or an option to post bail. What did they do to be sentenced to 30 days in jail? They ran a company called NoBull Solutions that uses a portable ultrasound machine to check on pregnant cows for dairy farmers that don’t already have one – like the Amish farmers in Lancaster and York Counties who shy away from all electronics, automobiles and ultrasound machines.

Is this another phase of Pennsylvania’s vendetta against Amish farmers?

Brook Duer, a lawyer with the Penn State Center for Agricultural and Shale Law, made statements to the media in an effort to tamp down the outcry. He said there have been numerous complaints against NoBull Solutions for practicing veterinary care without a license. But he didn’t mention those complaints were filed by the Veterinary Board four years ago! Fines were imposed and paid. NoBull Solutions modified their practice and went back to work. No new complaint was brought forth before the two dairy farmers were arrested and hauled off to jail.

Duer added, “Certainly the processes most attorneys are familiar with in regards to civil contempt are all there and were followed. There was plenty of due process here. It’s an unfortunate result, it’s probably best summarized by this is what happens when you disagree with something at some point in a state process…”

Due Process

“There was plenty of due process here.” Was there? Or were Wentworth and Herr railroaded into prison? A report in the truth-telling Canada Free Press by Milt Harris on 5 May tells us what the lawyer for the two farmers, Robert Barnes, says about due process.     

“This is an unlawful civil contempt order. There are certain procedures that must be followed in a civil contempt action and to our knowledge those were not followed here. Even if they had been followed, the maximum allowable punishment is 15 days in jail which must be conditional, with keys to your own jail cell – meaning there is a condition you can meet to immediately end your incarceration. None of that is true in this case.

         “The state claims this is a punishment for not complying with a subpoena to turn over documents, but an agency can’t just order anyone to turn over any document they please. For a subpoena to be valid, the jurisdictional validity of the subpoena must be established, and it has not been in this case. Both men had sought the advice of an attorney regarding the case and had been told that the Veterinary Medical Board had no jurisdiction over them, that the subpoena was therefore invalid, and that there was nothing Ethan and Rusty needed to do.

         “There is no evidence that Ethan or Rusty ever saw the order the state claims to have mailed to them last August which threatened them with arrest if they did not comply. Ethan and Rusty were unaware that this was a possibility. It was a complete shock to them and to their families when they were arrested.

         “Our clients were denied the ability to see the case against them or NoBull Solutions because the State had the docket sealed and hidden, a highly unusual move. If Ethan or Rusty searched for the case against them, they would have found nothing. Why would the state hide the case in this way if they really wanted our clients to engage and resolve the case? It gives the appearance that the intent was to secretly establish an excuse to arrest them and shut down NoBull Solutions without due process."

As a graduate of Georgetown University Law School, I venture to say that Robert Barnes is a better (or more practiced) lawyer with regard to due process than is Brook Duer of the Penn State Center for Agricultural and Shale Law.

Regarding the use of ultrasound to check on various attributes of cattle, including pregnancy, and the need for a veterinary license to do so, here is a very informative YouTube podcast by a farmer in North Carolina farmer on As A Man Thinketh that was viewed more than 460,000 times. He also discusses due process in the arrest of Wentworth and Herr. Click here.

The Future Pennsylvania Gulag

Barnes told Fox43 News on 2 May about what he intends to do. "Today, we filed an emergency motion with the Supreme Court to reverse this patently unlawful and unconstitutional order of imprisonment by the Commonwealth Court on behalf of the Pennsylvania Department of State. Shockingly, the state claims the power to imprison someone without any crime, any trial or even being named as a party to a case. That is against the law in Pennsylvania and the United States Constitution. If necessary, we will sue the state in federal court for these extraordinary violations of civil rights."

One must wonder how Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court will rule. Will they delay until the farmers are released and then say their motion is moot? (Moot means the motion has been overcome by events – like the prisoners were released.)

One must also wonder about how the arrest warrants were handled. Did county sheriffs actually have the warrants before they arrested their constituents? The sheriffs should be interviewed by the media – and by the residents of their counties. Or did State Police sidestep the sheriffs and arrest the farmers on behalf of the Commonwealth Court?

That conjures up images of Stalin’s death warrants in the former Soviet Union that were carried out by his State Police. Do you think that such a comparison is too unpleasant? In the face of how Wentworth and Herr were denied their day in court before being hauled off to prison, I think not.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was sent to a Soviet prison in a similar manner. Here is what he wrote about his arrest in his epic book, The Gulag Archipelago.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and so had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase. But if they understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? …The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if... We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation… We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Not only should the people of Lancaster and York Counties insist on appropriate restitution for their neighbors, no matter what the court decides, all Pennsylvanians should demand a clear and public accounting of what happened and exactly who caused it to happen.

To paraphrase Solzhenitsyn, if the Pennsylvanians do not do it, they will purely and simply deserve everything that will happen afterward.