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<\/a><\/p>\nJohn Moore Jr. frees a shark.<\/strong><\/em> WEST PALM BEACH,\u00a0 Florida\u2013\u2013<\/strong>John Moore Jr.,\u00a0 59,\u00a0 and Tanner Mansell,\u00a0 32,\u00a0 were on May 28,\u00a0 2025 presidentially pardoned for committing shark rescue.<\/p>\n Among the presidential record 1,600-odd pardons and commutations of criminal sentences issued by Donald Trump during his first four months in office,\u00a0 Moore and Mansell were perhaps the first two who were neither affluent nor influential Trumpists convicted of either fraud or corruption in public office,\u00a0 nor were participants in the January 6,\u00a0 2021 pro-Trump rioting in Washington D.C.,\u00a0 did not disrupt operations at an abortion clinic,\u00a0 and had no other criminal convictions.<\/p>\n Moore and Mansell were,\u00a0 however,\u00a0 high-profile victims of what even two judges of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals believed was \u201cprosecutorial overreach,\u201d\u00a0 the pretext Trump has repeatedly used in corruption cases involving his donors and supporters,\u00a0 and in describing his own 34 felony convictions for falsifying business records.<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Moore and Mansell,\u00a0 believing they were following the law,\u00a0 on August 10,\u00a0 2020 freed 19 sharks and two goliath groupers from three miles of monofilament fishing line,\u00a0 thinking the fish were victims of maritime poachers.<\/p>\n Moore and Mansell were not animal rights activists,\u00a0 though Mansell,\u00a0 Palm Beach Post<\/em> public safety and criminal justice reporter Hannah Phillips wrote in 2003,\u00a0 has \u201ctraveled the globe to help rebuild shark populations in communities where shark finning has depleted it.\u201d<\/p>\n Moore,\u00a0 according to Phillips,\u00a0 \u201cwasn\u2019t a \u2018shark hugger\u2019 or a sea hippie,\u201d\u00a0 either.<\/p>\n But both Moore and Mansell are shark divers:\u00a0 guides who take recreational divers out in boats from the Florida coast to scuba dive and watch sharks.<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Three miles off Jupiter Inlet on August 10,\u00a0 2020,\u00a0 guiding a diving party that included a police chief and his family,\u00a0 Moore and Mansell discovered an orange floating buoy.<\/p>\n \u201cMoore told the six tourists aboard his boat that he\u2019d seen setups like these in Hawaii,\u201d\u00a0 wrote Phillips.\u00a0 \u201cJug lines or \u2018ghost sets,\u2019 \u00a0he called them, \u00a0thrown overboard to kill sharks who might otherwise steal a fisherman\u2019s catch.\u201d<\/p>\n Moore, \u00a0Mansell,\u00a0 the police chief and his family for the next two hours hauled in the line attached to the buoy, \u00a0freeing mostly hammerhead and tiger sharks,\u00a0 photographing everything as potential evidence for a poaching prosecution.<\/p>\n A call to the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission brought only a delayed response.\u00a0 By the time Florida Wildlife Conservation officer Barry Partelow arrived,\u00a0 Phillips narrated,\u00a0 Moore and Mansell had \u201cthree miles of fishing line heaped on the floor of the boat,\u201d\u00a0 with \u201c140 circle hooks, \u00a0140 longline clips, \u00a0and pink weights.\u201d<\/p>\n John Moore Jr. & others unload longline.<\/strong><\/em> Summarized Phillips,\u00a0 \u201cPartelow wrote in his incident report that he didn\u2019t know what he was looking at, \u00a0and he had patrol duties to attend to. \u00a0He asked Moore to hold on to the longline, but Moore declined; \u00a0he had another dive expedition beginning soon.\u201d<\/p>\n Partelow agreed that Moore could leave the longline temporarily on the dock.<\/p>\n Mansell was \u201cstill on the water, \u00a0pulling in more of the longline\u201d two hours later,\u00a0 when Partelow informed him that the line was legally set,\u00a0 belonging to Richard Osburn of Fort Pierce,\u00a0 \u201cthe last federally permitted shark fisherman in the South Atlantic,\u201d\u00a0 according to Phillips.<\/p>\n Osburn had already discovered and reported that his line had been cut.\u00a0 A local blogger had already posted to Instagram a photo of the line,\u00a0 hooks,\u00a0 clips,\u00a0 and gear on the dock.<\/p>\n (Florida Southern District Court photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe photo went viral,\u201d\u00a0 recounted Phillips.\u00a0 \u201cIt ruptured an already tenuous relationship between the local fishing and shark-diving industries and prompted Scott Taylor, \u00a0captain of the boat to which the longline belonged, to call a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration investigator and seek criminal charges.\u201d<\/p>\n Fishers complaining of being regulated \u201cnearly out of existence,\u201d\u00a0 and unhappy about alleged shark proliferation since many shark species have been federally protected as threatened or endangered, \u00a0soon demanded prosecution of the \u201cvigilantes.\u201d<\/p>\n Eventually,\u00a0 Phillips continued,\u00a0 after Moore and Mansell were convicted of theft at a jury trial,\u00a0 \u201cU.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks sentenced the pair to one year of probation each,\u00a0 and ordered them to pay $3,345 in restitution\u201d to Osburn.<\/p>\n Inspector Javert, from original edition of Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em>(Wikipedia)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThough spared from prison,\u201d\u00a0 Phillips explained,\u00a0 \u201ctheir convictions made them felons, unable to vote, own firearms or freely travel abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n Moore and Mansell unsuccessfully appealed,\u00a0 but appellate judge Barbara Lagoa compared the prosecutor,\u00a0 Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Watts-Fitzgerald, \u00a0to \u201cInspector Javert \u2014 the relentless lawman from Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em> who pursued a man for decades over the theft of a single loaf of bread,\u201d\u00a0 Phillips recalled.<\/p>\n Wrote Lagoa,\u00a0 Moore and Mansell \u201care the only felons I have ever encountered, \u00a0in eighteen years on the bench and three years as a federal prosecutor, \u00a0who called law enforcement to report what they were seeing and what actions they were taking in real time.\u201d<\/p>\n Ric O\u2019Barry as Flipper trainer,\u00a0 1960s.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n ANIMALS 24-7<\/strong>,\u00a0 however,\u00a0 immediately recalled two semi-precedents.<\/p>\n Former Miami Seaquarium and Hollywood dolphin trainer Ric O\u2019Barry,\u00a0 then known as Richard Feldman,\u00a0 tried unsuccessfully on Earth Day 1970 to free a dolphin named Charlie Brown from a laboratory in the Bahamas.<\/p>\n Opening a gap in the sea pen that held Charlie Brown,\u00a0 O\u2019Barry gave the dolphin the chance to escape,\u00a0 but the dolphin did not want to go.<\/p>\n O\u2019Barry,\u00a0 formerly Feldman,\u00a0 then turned himself in to the Bahamian police,\u00a0 who did not know what to charge him with and therefore let him go.<\/p>\n Nearly eight years later,\u00a0 on May 29, 1977, \u00a0former researchers Ken LeVasseur and\u00a0Steve Sipman released two dolphins, \u00a0Puka and Kea, \u00a0into the ocean from the University\u00a0of Hawaii\u2019s Marine Mammal Laboratory,\u00a0 called police,\u00a0 and awaited their arrests.<\/p>\n Both LeVasseur and Sipman eventually did community service sentences.<\/p>\n
(U.S. Department of Justice photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nJohn Moore Jr. & Tanner Mansell released 19 hooked sharks & two goliath groupers<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nNot \u201cshark huggers\u201d or \u201csea hippies\u201d<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cJug lines\u201d or \u201cghost sets\u201d<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
(Florida Southern District Court photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\u201cDidn\u2019t know what he was looking at\u201d<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cPhoto went viral\u201d<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nInspector Javert<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nTwo semi-precedents<\/h2>\n