The saga of CJ Alexander, the now-infamous Wilmington man who poached one of many largest bucks in Ohio historical past and spun an enormous net of lies to cowl it up, has formally come to a detailed. Alexander was sentenced yesterday in Clinton County courtroom, and he’ll serve 90 days in jail for his main function within the high-profile poaching case, in keeping with a press release from Ohio Lawyer Basic Dave Yost. The legal professional common additionally ordered Alexander to pay a mixed $43,000 in fines, and his looking privileges have been revoked for no less than 10 years.
“Looking in Ohio is a time-honored custom, and there’s a correct method to be protected and profitable,” Yost stated Wednesday. “When unhealthy actors like these guys attempt to cheat the system, it ruins the fame of Ohio’s revered sportsmen and girls — I can’t stand for that.”
The opposite “unhealthy actors” implicated within the case had been brothers Corey and Zachary Haunert, and Alexander’s sister, Kristina M. Alexander, all of whom aided Alexander in poaching the buck and helped him stage an elaborate cowl up. The three people pleaded responsible to expenses in October and had been sentenced individually. But it surely’s Alexander who faces the largest penalties for his function as ringleader. Particularly, his sentence would require him to:
- Serve 180 days in jail, with 90 days suspended and the opposite 90 days served on the Star Neighborhood Justice Middle earlier than he might be eligible for work launch (his sentence additionally consists of an as much as 36-month suspended jail time period that turns into lively if neighborhood management is revoked)
- Serve 5 years of neighborhood management
- Pay $39,696.73 to the Ohio Wildlife Fund and $2,000 in restitution to KSE Sportsman Media, DBA Out of doors Sportsman Group-IM
- Pay $1,000 in restitution to the poaching hotline, a $1,000 wildlife wonderful and courtroom prices
- Enter a four- to six-month community-based program by means of the Star Neighborhood Justice Middle
- Write letters of apology to affected events
- Forfeit all hunting-related property seized by the Ohio Division of Pure Assets’ Division of Wildlife as proof
- Lose his looking license for at least 10 years; if full restitution isn’t paid by then, the license stays revoked till full cost is made
Alexander’s sentencing comes rather less than two months after he pleaded responsible to 14 expenses associated to the poaching. The costs included one felony depend every of theft by deception and tampering with proof, and 12 misdemeanors associated to looking violations, falsification, jacklighting, and the sale of wildlife elements.
His responsible plea in October was a significant about-face, as Alexander had strongly maintained his innocence for months. He repeatedly doubled down on these claims, each in interviews with OL and different media retailers, and in conversations with investigators.
The lies started nearly precisely one 12 months in the past on Dec. 8, 2023, when Alexander shared his story with Out of doors Life, claiming he killed the 200-plus-inch Ohio behemoth with a borrowed crossbow whereas looking his sister’s 9-acre property in Clinton County. He maintained this model of occasions after the Ohio Division of Pure Assets launched an investigation on Dec. 26, seizing the buck together with different proof in Alexander’s possession, and he continued to take action after being indicted on 23 felony expenses in June.
Public courtroom data obtained by Out of doors Life in October present how investigators used cellular phone data to unravel Alexander’s offenses. The trove of damning textual content messages and GPS location information proved how Alexander sought out and killed the 18-point buck on personal land the place he knowingly didn’t have permission to hunt. Additionally they present how, after Alexander killed the buck, he recovered the illegally harvested deer with accomplices and staged photographs on his sister’s property so he may revenue off the deer, mislead investigators, and turn into the hero of his personal looking story.
Learn Subsequent: CJ Alexander Pleads Responsible to 14 Prices Associated to Poaching Big Ohio Buck
“I’m gonna get supplied silly cash for this deer head babe … Like shopping for home sort cash … This deer is gonna make us cash,” Alexander texted his fiance Carissa Weisenberger on Oct. 17, a bit of over three weeks earlier than he killed the notorious “Alexander Buck.”
It appears solely becoming, then, that Alexander pays out the nostril for a buck that he poached for revenue — a buck that was at one level within the working for the third-largest all-time typical whitetail within the Boone and Crockett e book, and one which stood an opportunity of changing into the state’s new No. 1 whitetail deer.
Of the $43,000 in fines ordered by the legal professional common, $39,696.73 will go on to the Ohio Wildlife Fund to reimburse the state for the lack of such an unbelievable buck. Ohio takes these crimes severely, and the state calculates a particular restitution charge based mostly on the full inches of antler if the illegally taken deer scores greater than 125 inches gross. One extensively reported gross rating for the Alexander buck was 235 ⅞ inches, whereas a Buckmasters rating sheet on Alexander’s Instagram web page lists the gross rating as 217 4/8.
If Alexander is unable to cowl these prices, his looking license will stay revoked indefinitely, even after the 10-year suspension is full.
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