Jurors in Boulder, Colorado must decide whether to convict a former officer who shot a grazing elk on felony charges that could send him to prison, according to The Associated Press.
Sam Carter was charged with attempting to influence a public official, forgery and tampering with evidence after he shot the elk while on duty on a snowy New Year's Day 2013, the AP reported.
Prosecutors say Carter, fascinated with the elk, stalked it for days and sought to mount its head on a wall as a trophy, according to the AP.
They said he shut off the GPS in his squad car when he shot the animal, and failed to radio dispatchers his location. Prosecutors said Carter later forged a tag to pass off the dead animal as road kill, the AP reported.
Carter's his attorney, Marc Colin, said the elk had become dangerously domesticated and aggressive, frightening local dogs, according to the AP.
The trial opened with debate over whether the elk's prior "bad conduct" could be used as evidence, and whether jurors familiar with Big Boy could be impartial, the AP reported.
"Sam Carter is not guilty of anything but trying to protect citizens of Boulder from a nuisance elk," Colin said, as some in the packed courtroom shook their heads, according to the AP.
Prosecutors say Carter called another officer, Brent Curnow, to come cart away the body in his pickup truck, and together they butchered the animal for its meat, the AP reported. Curnow pleaded guilty last year to tampering with evidence and other charges and is expected to testify against Carter.
The officers swapped text messages about "hunting" for "wapiti," the Shawnee word for elk, according to the AP. The exchanges culminated with a stark message from Carter to Curnow well before Carter's shift began: "He's gonna die."
"Maybe we're strange, but the philosophy up here is live and let live," pet supply store owner Mary Lee Withers told The Associated Press in an interview. "That elk never did anything."
Withers said he would encounter the elk on walks with her St. Bernard, and her neighbors sometimes found it sleeping in their yards, according to the AP.
"He was not a pet, but he was a fixture of Mapleton," Withers said, the AP reported. "He had been there for years."
