Thursday, September 18, 2008 8:35 PM CDT
Defendant 'heartbroken' at horse farm conditions
By DAVE FOPAY, Staff Writer
dfopay@jg-tc.com
CHARLESTON — Ernest C. Rose on Thursday said he had bad luck with hired help at his Charleston farm, and that he was “heartbroken” to find the muddied conditions in one of his barns that kept some of his horses from eating and drinking.
Rose said until two people who worked at the farm testified in court, he “didn’t know who they were,” as a man he hired apparently brought them in to work without his approval.
“I had no knowledge of them working on the farm and I had no arrangement with them,” he said.
Rose testified on his own behalf Thursday at his trial on charges accusing him of neglecting 72 horses at his farm at 1050 W. Coolidge Ave., Charleston, which were discovered in August of last year. He said his work and other commitments have kept him away from Charleston much of the time for the last few years, so he’s had to rely on employees to maintain the farm.
Defense attorney Michael Tague hadn’t completed his questioning of Rose by the end of Thursday’s court session, so his testimony will continue today. Tague said Rose was the last witness he planned to call.
Assistant State’s Attorney Eric
Neumann said he and Assistant State’s Attorney Mick McAvoy will call some rebuttal witnesses after Rose’s testimony concludes. That should be followed by the attorneys’ closing arguments to Circuit Judge Mitchell Shick, who’s deciding the case instead of a jury. Shick could then announce his verdict immediately or take more time to consider the evidence first.
Rose is accused of failing to provide food, water and medical care to the horses and of failing to dispose of dead animals properly. If convicted, he may have to forfeit the horses, which are now in foster care, and would also face possible jail time and fines.
On Thursday, Rose, who is a physician, said he has a medical practice in the Chicago area and also runs an addiction treatment clinic in Peoria. While he still considers Charleston to be his home, he said he’s only able to return a few times a month.
He said he relied for several years on one worker, A.J. Sherry, who still worked at the farm part-time and regularly checked on it after taking another job in 2006. He said he then hired Gregory Andrews, who worked at the farm for about a year before Rose fired him.
“It got to the point where every time I came home on a weekend, there would be something wrong,” Rose said. He described Andrews as being able to “really turn it on” when it came to making excuses for his allegedly poor work.
Rose then said he later hired Ethan Ervin, but Ervin was hurt in July of last year, and was away from work for a month, until right after authorities first visited the farm to investigate the alleged neglect. The time of Ervin’s absence was when he hired Wade Galbreath, who Rose said apparently made his own arrangement to have the two other workers help him, Rose testified.
He also said he thought Sherry had buried horses that had died and thought that was a “non-issue” until the investigation discovered decomposing horses and skeletal remains in a ravine at the farm.
Tague has indicated that Rose’s defense will rely on the argument that he wasn’t aware of the poor conditions and expected workers to maintain the farm properly. He made the same argument when asking Shick for an acquittal at the end of the prosecution’s evidence, which the judge denied.
“They haven’t done anything to tie in Dr. Rose’s role or his actions or lack of actions,” Tague said.
But Shick said he was denying the motion before McAvoy got very far into his response, explaining that he’ll review the testimony of those who “place knowledge with Dr. Rose,” adding that there was at least some circumstantial evidence that Rose knew of the conditions at the farm.
Contact Dave Fopay at dfopay@jg-tc.com or 348-5733.
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85CHSGrad wrote on Sep 18, 2008 7:11 PM:
Why don't they just call it an assuming? And I remember what my English teacher taught us about assuming...
Pure Circumstantial Evidence = BS "