With less than three weeks before trial, defendants in San Juan County’s gate-closing case are now seeking a halt in the case pending an appeal to a pre-trial order, a change of venue and the recusal of County Attorney Kendall Laws.
Wilderness advocate Rose Chilcoat and husband Mark Franklin face a May 23 trial in Monticello on felony charges that they tried to kill livestock when Franklin admittedly closed a gate to rancher Zane Odell’s corral in Bears Ears National Monument, west of Bluff last year.
Prosecutors allege they closed the gate to block cattle from reaching water inside the corral, then filed a bogus complaint with federal land managers against Odell as a criminal act of retaliation.