The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

DAYTON – Defense Attorney Michael De Grasse petitioned Judge Scott D. Galina to dismiss all charges against archeologist Richard Lee Lyman in Columbia County Superior Court on Sept. 16. Columbia County Prosecuting Attorney Rea Culwell requested that the case proceed to trial but said charges against Lyman’s associates, Dave Schmitt and Matthew Boulanger, would be dropped.

The three out-of-state professional archeologists were charged in July with theft of prehistoric artifacts from the Umatilla National Forest and Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness in 2013.

Lyman, 64, is a professor and chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Missouri and holds a doctorate of anthropology from the University of Washington. On July 22 he entered a not guilty plea to charges of second-degree theft and second-degree malicious mischief, both class C felonies, and making false or misleading statements to a public servant, a gross misdemeanor.

Lyman’s associates, Dave N. Schmitt, 55, a research affiliate in the anthropology department at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Tex., and Matthew Boulanger, 38, a doctoral candidate in the department of anthropology and a senior research specialist at the archaeometry laboratory at the University of Missouri were charged with second-degree theft and second-degree mischief, class C felonies. The charges are based on a United States Forest Service investigation.

Schmitt and Boulanger have also pleaded not guilty. Schmitt is represented by Attorney Michael Hubbard and Boulanger is represented by Attorney Richard Wernette.

Lyman, Schmitt and Boulanger are reportedly in violation of the Archeological Resource Protection Act for removing, without permission, artifacts from portions of the national forest in Columbia County in 2013.

Ordinarily the U.S. Attorney prosecutes cases filed by the U.S. Forest Service. This case had been accepted but was later declined, in May 2014, because of a lack of resources, according to court documents. It was subsequently referred to Columbia County, where the alleged crimes were committed.

At Lyman’s Sept. 16 dismissal hearing, Attorney DeGrasse requested that all charges against him be dismissed because “there was no crime and there is no criminal.” DeGrasse said the project, as described by the state, is not what actually occurred.

DeGrasse said the archeologists obtained required permission and permits from the state to perform archeological reconnaissance in accordance with Fulgham 1989, the Umatilla National Forest Cultural Resources Inventory Plan, which he submitted to be entered into evidence.

DeGrasse said the archeologists performed surface reconnaissance, in accordance with the plan, which explicitly allows for the collection of materials and artifacts from the surface if they are deemed to be in jeopardy of imminent destruction or disturbance.

DeGrasse said Lyman made it clear to USFS personnel, in both oral conversation and in writing, that they may need to collect samples and that if they determined artifacts were in danger of disturbance they would be picked up.

In a written statement, Lyman said the total materials collected “easily fit in a small shoebox.” He also said he informed the USFS of the collected items as well as his intent to return them, which he did, upon request. He also said no artifacts were damaged or destroyed, though some non- artifactual rock specimens were destroyed through testing.

DeGrasse reiterated that there has been no criminal activity, but rather an archeological enterprise that acted under accepted guidelines. He said there was no theft, no malicious mischief and that no false or misleading statements had been made.

“There is no crime and there is no criminal,” said DeGrasse.

Prosecuting Attorney Rea Culwell responded by requesting that the case be decided on the facts and said that deciding those facts was a duty of the jury and not of the judge. She also said that the state would be dismissing charges against Boulanger and Schmitt, who would both testify at Lyman’s trial. (Orders for dismissal, without prejudice, were filed this week.)

Judge Galina said he would take the dismissal under advisement. Barring dismissal, a court date is scheduled for Oct. 15-16.