The department recently received a number of citizen concerns regarding pedestrian safety on 11th St., particularly in the area of the Willow Tree Plaza, according to a report from Lt. Brad Rasmussen.

Rasmussen said the concerns reported to police related to vehicles traveling at speeds unsafe for conditions and drivers failing to stop for pedestrians within crosswalks.

On Sept. 19 Lakeport Police conducted a pedestrian crosswalk safety enforcement operation, using a police employee as a pedestrian, Rasmussen said.

During the course of the three-hour operation, officers stopped 12 vehicles and issued seven citations to drivers who failed to yield to pedestrians, according to Rasmussen.

Sometime over the next three days, the department will again conduct a crosswalk safety enforcement operation somewhere in Lakeport, Rasmussen said.

Over the past two years the Lakeport Police Department, the city of Lakeport and the Traffic Safety Advisory Committee have worked to increase pedestrian safety, reduce accidents and educate drivers. Rasmussen said those efforts have included conducting pedestrian safety enforcement operations and installing pedestrian safety signs in other areas of the city.

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Thomas William Miller, 37, of Cobb, allegedly kidnapped Sally Martin, 30, from her home in Whispering Pines over the weekend, and then disappeared into the Boggs Mountain area, as Lake County News has reported.

Miller – who officials had warned was armed and extremely dangerous – was arrested at 11:26 p.m. Sunday and booked into the Lake County Jail a few hours later, according to booking records.

There is no word yet on Martin's condition. When she had last been seen – as Miller was allegedly dragging her off – she had reportedly been injured.

Miller is being held on felony charges of kidnapping, inflicting corporal injury on a cohabitant and terrorist threats, along with misdemeanor counts of possessing controlled substance paraphernalia, resisting an officer and an outside agency arrest warrant.

His bail totals $258,000, according to jail records.

A full report of the arrest is expected shortly, according to Captain James Bauman of the Lake County Sheriff's Office.

E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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In a 2-1 decision, the court upheld a ruling by District Court Judge Charles Breyer last May that USDA failed to address concerns that Roundup Ready alfalfa will contaminate conventional and organic alfalfa, with the potential to damage the environment and harm farmers.

At that time Breyer placed an injunction on further planting of the crop until the USDA completed the environmental impact statement. His ruling noted that, at the time, 200,000 acres of Roundup Ready alfalfa were planted nationwide.

The case was brought against the U.S. Department of Agriculture by the Center for Food Safety and several co-plaintiffs – Western Organization of Resource Councils, National Family Farm Coalition, Sierra Club, Beyond Pesticides, Cornucopia Institute, Dakota Resource Council, Trask Family Seeds and Geertson Seed Farms.

The groups sued the USDA in 2006, alleging the agency's Animal Plant Health and Inspection Service (APHIS) had violated federal environmental law in deregulating the crop in 2005 without first completing the environmental study.

Forage Genetics, which developed the Roundup Ready alfalfa seed, and Monsanto Co., which owns the intellectual property rights to Roundup Ready alfalfa, entered into the suit as defendant-intervenors.

Roundup Ready alfalfa is genetically engineered to be tolerant of glyphosate, the main in ingredient in herbicide Roundup.

In November 2004, APHIS published a Federal Register notice on Monsanto's deregulation petition. The agency received 663 comments on the petition, 520 of which opposed it, according to court documents.

Alfalfa growers and seed producers, the court noted, had supported the petition, saying there was a demand for weed-free alfalfa. Those opposing deregulation, which included both organic and conventional alfalfa growers, cited concerns over gene transmission and rejection by foreign markets, and urged a full environmental evaluation be done.

After considering the comments, in June 2005 APHIS made a finding of no significant impact and deregulated the hay crop, according to court documents.

Roundup Ready alfalfa had been the focus of an ordinance taken to the Lake County Board of Supervisors in the fall of 2005.

The ordinance, proposed by the Coalition for Responsible Agriculture, sought to place a 30-month ban on planting Roundup Ready alfalfa in Lake County, as Lake County News has reported. The Lake County Farm Bureau opposed the proposal.

The board voted the ordinance down 3-2; Supervisors Gary Lewis, Rob Brown and Jeff Smith voted against it with Ed Robey and Anthony Farrington voting for it.

In her opinion issued Tuesday, Circuit Judge Mary M. Schroeder held that "Monsanto and Forage Genetics contend that the District Court disregarded their financial losses, but the district court considered those economic losses and simply concluded that the harm to growers and consumers who wanted non-genetically engineered alfalfa outweighed the financial hardships to Monsanto and Forage Genetics and their growers."

Circuit Judge N. Randy Smith was the dissenter in the decision, saying Breyer's court failed to hold a required evidentiary hearing before issuing the permanent injunction last May. He said he has “serious concerns” about the injunction's scope.

“At best, the record reflects sparse evidence of hay-to-hay gene transmission of Roundup Ready alfalfa in some areas of the country under certain planting conditions,” Smith wrote. “Further, I see no good evidence of hay-to-see or seed-to-seed gene transmission.”

Smith said the nationwide injunction had “severe economic consequences” for Monsanto, Forage Genetics, as well as for farmers and distributors who depended on the alfalfa seed being available. Without an evidentiary hearing, Smith said he had no confidence in the need for a nationwide injunction pending the environmental impact study.

Monsanto did not respond to Lake County News' request for a response on Wednesday.

Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, said in a written statement that the ruling affirms a major victory for consumers, ranchers, organic farmers and most conventional farmers across the country.

“Roundup Ready Alfalfa represents a very real threat to farmers' livelihoods and the environment,” Kimbrell said. “The judge rightly dismissed Monsanto's claims that their bottom line should come before the rights of the public and America's farmers. This ruling is a turning point in the regulation of biotech crops in this country."

Of the more than 70 crops the USDA has deregulated, only two – Roundup Ready creeping bentgrass and Roundup Ready alfalfa – have been required to undergo full environmental studies, according to USDA spokesperson Cindy Ragin.

Like the alfalfa crop, genetically engineered creeping bentgrass – commonly used for lawns and golf courses – also was the focus of a Center for Food Safety lawsuit that precipitated the study, according to court documents.

The creeping bentgrass study began in 2004 and is still ongoing; Ragin said there is no firm timeframe for completing the alfalfa study.

Earlier this year, the Center for Food Safety filed another lawsuit against a deregulated Roundup Ready crop, this time for sugar beets, claiming APHIS didn't thoroughly assess the crop's impacts before full release.

E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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Sgt. Brett Rhodes of the Clearlake Police Department reported Thursday that, besides the local check scam cases, there is an increase of such scams nationwide.

The National Check Fraud Center reports that check fraud and counterfeiting are fast-growing crimes. The group reported that such scams are producing annual losses of $10 billion nationwide. They also cited an Ernst and Young study that found that more than 500 billion checks are forged annually.

Rhodes said many of the check scams law enforcement sees are run through the U.S. Mail system by suspects with sophisticated techniques who are often out of the area – and sometimes out of the country as well.

The scams often use fake checks that are pre-printed in the victim's name and request the victim send a portion of money in return. He said scams also are attempted locally, with the suspects creating fictitious personal or payroll checks which they try to cash.

In both cases, Rhodes said the checks and mailing material appear authentic but are later determined to be fake.

That's why it's important for people to take several precautionary steps to ensure the checks they're accepting are valid and avoid becoming victims, Rhodes said.

First, if you are not expecting money from anyone, you should be on the alert, Rhodes said, especially if the sender is requesting any form of money in return.

Rhodes said it's important to think before you act. You can often take such checks to a bank, where it can be determined whether or not the checks are real or fake.

When receiving such a check, the recipient should try to verify the information from the sender, Rhodes said. It's often the case that the information is fake and can't be verified.

Law enforcement also can assist victims by looking at suspicious documents that require analysis, said Rhodes.

Check scams are an “ongoing criminal enterprise” that will make several attempts to lure innocent victims into sending money, Rhodes said.

He added that learning about what to look for will allow you to recognize a check scam before you become a victim.

For more information on how to protect yourself from check scams, visit the National Check Fraud Center t www.ckfraud.org or the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Web site at www.fbi.gov/majcases/fraud/fraudschemes.htm.

If you suspect you're a check fraud victim, contact your local law enforcement agency.

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THIS STORY HAS BEEN CORRECTED REGARDING THE ATTORNEY WHO REPRESENTED DAVISON. 

EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS STORY CONTAINS GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS WHICH SOME READERS MAY FIND DISTURBING.

LAKE COUNTY – An appellate court has upheld the conviction in a murder case in which a local man was successfully prosecuted even though the body of his victim was never found.

On Wednesday the First Appellate District Court filed a unanimous, 18-page unpublished decision upholding 37-year-old Nathan Lee Davison's October 2005 murder conviction for the 1998 murder of his wife's stepfather, Tracy Lyons.

Judge Arthur Mann sentenced Davison to 45 years to life in prison for the murder, which was built mostly on circumstantial evidence because Lyons' body was never found, despite the efforts of investigators equipped with cadaver dogs.

Jon Hopkins prosecuted the case while chief deputy district attorney, before his election as district attorney. Davison was convicted in his second trial, after the first resulted in a hung jury.

“This is the right decision by the Court of Appeals,” Hopkins said Wednesday.

It was the testimony of Davison's ex-wife, Jillian, and her mother, Debra Lyons, which had provided the main evidence supporting the case against him, the justices' opinion noted.

Hopkins said Davison appealed on multiple grounds, one of which was that the defense attorney hadn't discovered certain potential witnesses, arguing they would testify that Jillian Davison had made inconsistent statements regarding the Lyons' disappearance.

However, Hopkins pointed out, Jillian Davison testified that she hid her knowledge of the killing by Nathan Davison because she feared him. “The end result of having these friends and relatives of the defendant testify would not have been a different verdict,” Hopkins said.

The motivation for killing Lyons, according to case documents, was Lyons' molestation of Jillian Davison, beginning when she was 5 years old and lasting until she was 9, when she told a teacher. He would later be arrested and convicted of the molestation. Following prison, he returned to live with his wife and stepdaughter.

When Jillian and Davison later began a relationship, she told him about the molestation. “Davison was outraged and told her many times that Lyons should die, and that he would kill him,” the appellate court decision explains.

Based on testimony from the mother and daughter, the murder reportedly took place in January 1998. They recounted that Davison claimed he went to Lyons' Clearlake Oaks ranch and shot him in the head as he was unloading dog food out of the back of his truck, then shot him again once he was on the ground.

Davison is later reported to have cut up Lyons' body with a chainsaw, put it in a 55-gallon drum and loaded it into Lyons' truck, then drove to a wooded area. There Jillian Davison recounted he dug a hole, put the body parts into it and sent them on fire with kerosene before covering the hole with dirt and brush.

In an effort to cover for Lyons' murder, Davison had the women report Lyons missing and he abandoned Lyons' pickup in a Santa Rosa Safeway parking lot.

The Lake County Sheriff's Office tracked Nathan and Jillian Davison to Crescent City in 2000 and confronted them about Lyons' death. Afterward they went to Las Vegas to get married in order to prevent having to testify against each other. They, along with Debra Lyons and Jillian's brother, James, moved to Reno in late 2000 or early 2001. Jillian Davison later became pregnant; she and Nathan Davison split up after the June 2002 birth of their child and they eventually divorced.

In early 2005 sheriff's detectives Dave Perry and Corey Paulich approached Debra Lyons, who agreed to tell them “everything” about the case, according to the appellate opinion. She also convinced her daughter to speak with them and in March 2005 Jillian Davison took the detectives to the area where she said Davison buried Tracy Lyons' body.

In two separate visits to the reported burial site, several cadaver dogs “alerted” that they detected human remains, although no part of Lyons' body was ever found, the court documents state.

In appealing his conviction, Davison said the trial court erred in not granting him a third trial, and claimed his attorney for both trials, Doug Rhoades, was “ineffective in that he did not hire an investigator, failed to investigate potential witnesses who would have testified about Jillian and Debra’s motives to lie about Davison killing Lyons. Davison also claimed his attorney failed to interview witnesses who would testify to his nonviolent character.”

Following the second trial, he was represented by attorney Mitchell Hauptman, who sought the new trial.

However, the appellate court found no fault with Rhoades' actions, and further ruled that Davison's request for a new trial wasn't justified because he hadn't demonstrated “a reasonable probability of a more favorable result,” despite his earlier jury having deadlocked, 6-6.

E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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Lt. Rusty Noe of the Mendocino County Sheriff's Investigative Services Bureau reported that Rex Ramsey, 68, and Divina Ramsey, 30, both of Longvale; and four Covelo residents – Terry Blansette, 61; Lila Blansette, 63; Barbara Daughtery, 38; and Roy Wentz, 44, were arrested on charges of cultivation and marijuana sales. Rex Ramsey and Divina Ramsey are facing additional firearms charges as well.

On Wednesday morning at approximately 7:30 a.m., deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, assisted by agents from the Mendocino Major Crimes Task Force and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, served a search warrant in the 38000 Block of Highway 162 in Longvale, Noe reported.

Noe said the investigation led to the arrest of Rex Ramsey and Divina Ramsey for cultivation of marijuana and possessing marijuana for sale after officers located 170 growing marijuana plants – in both indoor and outdoor gardens – and approximately 20 pounds of processed marijuana.

Also located were 12 guns, including a sawed-off shotgun and a loaded handgun, according to Noe, along with approximately $2,000 in U.S. currency, which was seized at the residence. Both subjects also were charged with being armed during the commission of a felony.

Noe said officers from the Mendocino County Department of Environmental Health were called to the scene after a diesel fuel spill was located. A 5-year-old child at the location was placed in the care of Child Protective Services.

Later on Wednesday, at 9:40 a.m., deputies and agents served an associated search warrant on another property owned by Rex Ramsey, located in the 27000 Block of Mendocino Pass Road in Covelo. Noe said that during the service of that search warrant, an additional 485 indoor marijuana plants and approximately 5 pounds of processed marijuana were located. Terry Blansette and Lilia Blansette were arrested during the investigation.

Another 100 plant indoor marijuana garden was located in a large industrial building on the same property, said Noe, which led to the arrests of Daughtrey and Wentz.

Meanwhile, in Lake County, at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday Lake County Sheriff's deputies and agents from the Lake County Narcotic Task Force served a search warrant at another residence owned by Rex Ramsey on Spruce Grove Road in Lower Lake, Noe said.

During that search, an additional 397 marijuana plants were eradicated from an indoor marijuana garden, according to Noe.

The three search warrants were part of a dual-county investigation which Noe said was the result of a commitment by Lake County Sheriff Rod Mitchell and Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman to target criminal networks operating in both counties.

Noe said the sheriffs have met several times to coordinate large commercial marijuana investigations which involve both counties.

“Sheriff Mitchell and I recognize the importance of working as a team on these large, dual-county criminal networks,” said Allman. “Working with the Lake County Sheriff’s Office has led to better information, better investigations and better enforcement in both our counties.”

Added Mitchell, “Criminal networks which have operated in both counties will be targeted. Coordinating investigations with Mendocino County will allow our officers to pursue the large commercials growers who are using both counties for their illegal activities.”

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