Tree-cutter unfairly targeted, his lawyers say at trial’s start

Dennis Rainey, the Christian lifestyle influencer on trial this week for cutting more than 100 trees on public property to improve his view of Lake Maumelle, is only on trial because he’s become the target of both a “grassroots campaign” by environmentalists out to get him and a similarly obsessed government agency that wants to make an example of him through his wallet, his lawyers told a Pulaski County jury on Wednesday.

An author, counselor and broadcaster, Rainey, who, with wife Barbara, founded FamilyLife, the biblical-based relationship counseling center in Little Rock, is charged with Class B felony criminal mischief, which carries up to 20 years in prison for the damage. Property owner Central Arkansas Water estimates the tree loss and mutilation is worth more than $109,000.

There’s no dispute a Rainey-directed work crew cut up the grove of 111 trees, topping some, and cutting down others, all on Central Arkansas Water property or why he did it.

Rainey has acknowledged it and apologized, saying that he was given permission more than 30 years ago to reshape the treeline so his family’s hilltop Roland home for 40 years has a clearer view of the lake, the drinking water source for more than 500,000 Arkansas residents.

The water utility maintains the forests that surround the 8,900-acre lake because of their important role in purifying stormwater runoff that contributes to the lake, and works to keep the watershed pristine, although some of the grounds are available for hiking, boating and fishing.

The issue for the seven-man, five-woman jury to resolve is whether a crime was committed, and if it was, what are the damages worth.

If jurors conclude the May 2021 grove trimming was vandalism, like authorities say, the severity of the resulting felony depends on what jurors think the damages were worth. Less than $25,000 is a Class C felony with a 10-year prison maximum, while less than $5,000 is a Class D felony with at most six years incarceration. The severity of the charges also allow fines of $10,000 to $15,000 and probation.

“This is a case of seeking forgiveness instead of permission,” deputy prosecutor Robbie Jones told jurors in his opening Wednesday.

“He wanted to eliminate these trees to make his view pretty,” Jones said. “Mr. Rainey had no permission to do this.”

Jones said that after being confronted about the tree damage, Rainey further engaged in a shadow campaign to avoid responsibility through a campaign of “veiled threats” to use his personal influence with friends in high places and the power of his audience of followers against the water company. Prosecutors will resume presenting evidence at 9 a.m. today before Circuit Judge Cathi Compton.

If there’s a victim here, it’s Rainey, who’s been subjected to malicious accusations when he’s only ever tried to do the right thing in his personal and professional lives, including apologizing for his mistake and offering to rectify it, his attorney, David Parker, told jurors in his opening

remarks.

The criminal case against the married father of six is “one of the scariest cases … what can happen when the government comes after you,” he said.

Parker said authorities can’t prove he acted with any maliciousness, telling jurors that the water utility turned a deaf ear to Rainey’s effort to amicably resolve the situation. Instead, Central Arkansas Water officials went to the sheriff’s office, demanding the criminal probe that resulted in Rainey’s arrest and charges in July 2021, Parker said.

In part, the utility was pushed into taking action by a grassroots campaign that wants “to do the worst damage they can do to him” and organized by Rhonda Patton of Roland, who first discovered the fallen trees during her regular hike through the watershed forest, he told jurors.

That campaign involved threatening Central Arkansas Water with the loss of financial support with activists promising to rally others to hurt the utility financially, Parker said. Those campaigners, unnamed so far beyond Patton, also pushed the sheriff’s office to arrest Rainey, he told jurors, suggesting that Central Arkansas Water encouraged those activists to advocate for criminal charges.

The result was a “scared to death” water company — at first not sure how to react to the tree loss — to decide on a “go for the jugular” approach to Rainey, Parker said. Further, water utility officials looked into Rainey and FamilyLife’s finances “to make the decision this is the guy they want to make an example of,” Parker said.

To that end, the utility shopped around for appraisal techniques that would maximize their damages to bump up their restitution demands, Parker told jurors.

He said Central Arkansas Water ignored how other government agencies, such as state Game and Fish, would appraise the value of forest damages, because those numbers were not large enough to satisfy the utility’s operators. The utility hit the “jackpot” when it decided to use the same appraisal process as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to assess what the trees were worth, even though its forestry experts had never done that kind of work before, Parker said.

Rainey has never denied what happened or tried to hide it, Parker said, pointing out that his actions had not been subtle; Rainey had hired a chainsaw crew to work in broad daylight to remove the treetops and branches. Rainey has always acted in good faith, sincerely believing he was allowed to manage the treeline to accommodate his view of the lake, Parker said.

“Mr. Rainey had a reasonable belief he had permission,” he told jurors.

Jurors will get a chance to hear Rainey’s version of events when he testifies, Parker, with co-counsel Judson Kidd, told the panel, saying that the defense will also present more reliable forestry appraisers than the prosecution has. In court filings, they’ve asserted the trees were worth at most about $1,100.

Rainey’s story will be somewhat constrained because, at the request of prosecutors, he’s been prohibited from telling jurors that he received permission to cut back the tree line directly from a prior administration of water utility officials in the 1990s.

The two men he claims can directly corroborate his story are dead, although one, who passed away during the investigation, told sheriff’s deputies before he died that Rainey never received the sort of permission he claims to have. Rainey can tell jurors that he believed he had permission to do what he did, just not the alleged source of that approval.

Jones, the prosecutor, with co-counsel Nicole Pace and Christopher Turansky, convinced the judge that Rainey’s claims would make his testimony inadmissible hearsay. An effort by Rainey’s lawyers to overcome that argument through a witness who said he’d been told that Rainey had permission to cut the treeline was also deemed inadmissible hearsay.

Hearsay is an out-of-court statement made by someone other than the testifying witness who wants that statement to be used as proof of the truth of their case. With a few exceptions, hearsay is regularly barred from trial.

Further, prosecutors argued that if the defense witness was allowed to testify about what he had heard, they should be allowed to call hearsay witnesses who would testify that they had heard Rainey did not have permission.