Snake litigation earns a hiss

It began quietly enough in 2002 and two years later was hailed as "Operation Slither," a multistate undercover sting to nab criminals engaged in the illegal possession or trafficking of reptiles.

Three Utah homes were raided by armed law enforcement officers, reptiles seized and the bad guys caught.

Five years later, an innocuous little trial played out this past week in 2nd District Court in Layton, where one of the defendants had appealed his justice court conviction on a misdemeanor count of unlawful possession of wildlife.

Two men from the Utah Attorney General's Office were there to prosecute the case, which by April had been amended to an infraction and set for a one-day trial.

On Thursday, Ryan Hoyer was found guilty, fined $750 and had an 85 percent surcharge leveled against him. He'll end up paying a little more than $1,300 — if he doesn't appeal.

His crime?

Possessing 27 rubber boas from out of state without a certificate of veterinary inspection.

Officers seized 65 snakes from Hoyer that day in January 2004 — the majority of which died while in the care of the Division of Wildlife Resources. Although a search warrant for his home assured the judge that his legally possessed Utah rubber boas would be returned to him, they weren't. The division contends they were evidence in a criminal case.

Hoyer was not a snake aficionado who was filling his basement with the creatures. He engaged in scientific research on the species with his father, Richard, who is an expert field biologist on the rubber boa.

The snakes confiscated in the raid were to be part of a field study for research to be presented at a symposium. Although Hoyer could legally collect the snakes from Utah's mountains and canyons, the state contended he lacked the inspection paperwork to possess the snakes his father had gathered from out of state.

Hoyer disagrees, saying the division selectively enforced a rule it had incorporated from the Department of Agriculture that requires inspection of livestock to prevent the spread of disease.

"I'm a CPA, an internal auditor. I am all about following the rules. I dot the i's and cross the t's and read the regulations.... I thought I was following the law."

He contends the state is distorting its interpretation of the rules.

"If that is the correct interpretation ... then there are countless other Utahns that have broken the law when they moved here with their pets, took their dog to Yellowstone on vacation and brought it back into Utah or even had a housefly hitch a ride inside their Winnebago when they crossed the state line into Utah."