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ABALONE POACHER GETS TERM IN
PRISON
Published on February 7, 1996
© 1996- The
Press Democrat
BYLINE: Bony
Saludes
Staff Writer
PAGE: A1
A Santa Rosa judge on Tuesday handed a two-year state
prison sentence to a man who helped mastermind a huge
abalone poaching operation off the Sonoma County coast,
but let two others withdraw their no contest pleas and go to
trial.
Superior Court Judge Raymond Giordano had struck a
no-prison deal with the three men but decided he wanted to
sentence them to prison after all when he found out how big
the environmental crime was.
The three men were among a dozen people who were arrested
last year as suspects in what fish and game officials say was
the biggest abalone poaching operation in the state's
history.
More than 10,000 abalone with a commercial value
ranging from $600,000 to $1 million were plucked off the rocks
in five locations near Fort Ross over a year's time, officials
said.
Officials believe the abalone was sold to
lucrative markets in New York and Asia.
Giordano sentenced Eddie Blay, whose Santa Rosa home
was used as a processing and distribution center for the
ill-gotten mollusks, to prison for conspiracy to violate state
fish and game laws, and welfare fraud.
Blay, an unemployed landscaper, had a chance to
withdraw his plea and go to trial but chose to keep his plea
and be sentenced, knowing Giordano would send him to prison.
``He feels true remorse over this and wanted to take
his punishment and get it behind him,'' defense lawyer
Jonathan Steele said. ``I was prepared to go to trial, but he
talked it over with his family and this is what he decided to
do.''
Two other suspected ring leaders, Van Howard ``Hojo''
Johnson, a San Diego commercial fisherman, and Angelo Vichi, a
Santa Rosa diver, took advantage of the opportunity to change
their pleas and asked to go to trial. Their trial is set April
8. They face three years in prison if convicted.
Johnson is accused of setting up the operation and
paying the others to supply him with abalone, which he
allegedly resold to Asian markets. Officials said Vichi also
helped set up the operation, but he has denied playing any
role in it.
``I'm pleased,'' said prosecutor Brooke Halsey Jr. of
the disposition in the Blay case. ``It was an appropriate
sentence. He belongs is prison.''
Halsey said he's been prepared all along to try Johnson
and Vichi.
``It's going to give us a chance to show what the
evidence really is,'' Halsey said. ``The defense lawyers keep
saying we've blown the case out of proportion. We will be glad
to show our evidence.''
Geoffrey Dunham and John LemMon, lawyers for Johnson
and Vichi, respectively, said they're seeking to disqualify
Halsey from the case because he took an active part in the
investigation. Halsey joined game wardens in the field several
times times during the investigation into the poaching
operation.
They also said they will ask the judge to move the
trial out of Sonoma County.
``We can't try the case in this county given the
publicity and the fact the judge said they should go to
prison,'' Dunham said.
``We don't feel we can get a fair trial in this
county,'' LemMon said.
Blay, who was taken into custody immediately, also was
fined $20,000 and ordered to pay back some $1,300 in welfare
benefits he fraudulently received because he failed to report
his earnings from the abalone caper.
His wife, Debra Blay, last week got a suspended prison
sentence, five years probation, a year in the county jail and
ordered to pay $20,000 into the Northern California
Abalone Restoration Fund.
Steele made a final attempt to get Giordano to stick by
the no-prison deal he made with Blay last year.
He said when the deal was made, the defendants were led
to believe that the poaching caused permanent damage to the
ecosystem and that it would take 100 years to restore it.
Steele said the prosecution's abalone expert
subsequently testified there was a potential impact on the
abalone surplus on the coast, but there was no damage
to the ecosystem.
He said other people have been given probation for
committing a felony for the first time and that it would be
unjust to treat Eddie Blay differently.
``It's unfortunate that in this case the concern for
the potential impact on sports fishermen rises above the
concern for the impact of other felony crimes,'' Steele said.
Steele said the Blays were broke and on welfare when
they were recruited by others, including Michael Kagley, a key
defendant who turned confidential informant, for use of their
house after a ``safe house'' in Cazadero was exposed.
``They were approached at a time that they were most
vulnerable,'' Steele said. ``They never did anything with
abalone before. They don't even know how to swim. They
did provide their home and helped with offshore operations,
however.''
Eddie Blay became the second convicted abalone
poacher ever to be sentenced to prison in California for
felony conspiracy to violate misdemeanor fish and game laws.
The first was Darrell Tatman, a 58-year-old former
fisherman from the Sacramento area, who got three years in
prison in 1992 for illegally taking 196 abalone from
the Mendocino County coast.
Earlier that year, Tatman got two years in jail in
Sonoma County for taking 55 abalone off the Sonoma
County coast and even earlier, he got nine months for taking
400 abalone from the Mendocino County coast.
Last week, Giordano also sentenced four other Santa
Rosa defendants county jail terms ranging from 60 days to a
year and ordered them to pay $10,000 to $12,000 into the
abalone restoration fund.
Two other defendants were sentenced last year and
ordered to pay a total of $30,000 into the fund.
PHOTO: b&w mug, Blay
Keywords: FISHING
CRIME SENTENCE
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