One charge dropped in Yurok grave robbing case
A judge in California dropped one charge against a California man who posted YouTube video of him digging at an ancestral village of the Yurok Tribe.

The judge said there wasn't enough evidence to show James Edward Truhls, 30, took an item he knew to be an artifact from a grave. The charge was a felony, the most serious of the charges against Truhls.

”The law requires that it be taken from a grave,” Judge Joyce Hinrichs said, The Eureka Times-Standard reported. “There hasn't been any testimony that says it was taken from a grave.”

Truhls faces two misdemeanor charges for allegedly removing archeological interests and injuring a work of art. His YouTube video showed him digging at Patrick's Point State Park.

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Felony grave-looting charge dropped for Truhls (The Eureka Times-Standard 3/20)