An important, centuries-old English charter that established commoners’ rights to use public lands cannot be cited to justify a Rolfe man’s contemporary theft of trees from a wildlife management area, a judge has ruled.

“The court finds that the English common law rights enumerated by the Charter of the Forest of 1217 do not apply to this case,” District Court Judge Derek Johnson wrote. “The Charter of the Forest explicitly applied only to the forests of England, and the laws of the United States have meaningfully and deliberately deviated from the rights granted under the charter.”

The judge’s decision about the charter on Tuesday was part of his denial of a new trial for Jason Levant Ferguson, 41, who was found guilty by a jury last month of felony theft and 50 timber violations.

He is set to be sentenced next month and faces up to five years in prison for the theft charge and one year each for the timber violations.

Ferguson admitted to cutting down and taking dozens of trees from the Stoddard Wildlife Management Area northeast of Rolfe over the course of more than a year, court records show.

That included a slow-growing bur oak that was about six feet in diameter at its base. Ferguson told officers of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources that he planned to use some of the timber to build a house.

But it is illegal to cut down and take trees from public property without permission. Ferguson alleged at trial that he had legally taken trees from the area when it was owned by someone else but was unable to provide evidence of the claim. His attorney, in a recent court filing, said someone who could have testified to the claim is dead.

After the jury’s verdict last month, Ferguson asked for a new trial for a variety of reasons, including his alleged protection by the Charter of the Forest, which was first issued by King Henry III at the age of 10.

Ferguson’s attorney, Kevin Fors of Harcourt, argued that provisions of the charter became part of the United States’ common law when it declared independence from England.

“Every freeman may agest his own wood within our forest at his pleasure and shall take his pawnage,” the charter said.

The judge disagreed that the charter applies to Ferguson. He also was not persuaded by the other arguments for a new trial, including that the Iowa Capital Dispatch’s coverage of the case — which was republished by several other news organizations — was so pervasive that it must have tainted jurors’ opinions.

Iowa Capital Dispatch’s article about the case included information about alleged drug production at Ferguson’s residence and that he was accused of being a felon who illegally possessed firearms. Criminal charges related to those allegations were dismissed after the judge decided they were based on evidence obtained with improperly approved search warrants.

The trial went for four days, and Judge Johnson said he was careful to query the jurors each morning about whether they had avoided media coverage of the case.

“The defendant makes only an allegation of a possibility of media exposure, but has not provided any evidence that the jurors received and considered any information about this case outside of the evidence produced at trial,” Johnson wrote.

Ferguson’s sentencing hearing is set for Jan. 26.

Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on Facebook and Twitter.