January 27, 2005

BILL OF RIGHTS COPY IS BACK IN LIMBO

By Anne Blythe, Raleigh News and Observer Staff Writer

North Carolina's original copy of the U.S. Bill of Rights, a faded, hand-quilled parchment, might not be home to stay after all.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday sent the question of the copy's ownership back to U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle. He ruled in January 2004 that the once-purloined document could belong to no one other than the state.

A Connecticut Yankee and his lawyer think otherwise. They say they are glad the appeals court overturned Boyle's ruling and look forward to another chance to prove their case.

Bob Matthews, a developer from Connecticut, joined with Wayne Pratt, an antiques dealer, in 2000 to buy the document from two elderly women, reportedly for $200,000. But in September 2003, after federal agents threatened prosecution, Pratt agreed to turn over the document to North Carolina.

Mike Stratton, a lawyer from Connecticut representing Matthews, says Pratt didn't have a right to do that alone. Matthews, he says, has a rightful stake in the 216-year-old record.

"I'm sure every effort will be made still to deprive us of the document," Stratton said during a telephone interview from Jackson Hole, Wyo., where he was on a ski trip. "Basically, the 4th Circuit said the court had no power to give the document to the state."

The parchment, which President Washington sent to North Carolina in 1789, has been up and down the East Coast since it disappeared from the state Capitol at the end of the Civil War.

It resurfaced in 2003, when Pratt and Matthews tried to sell it to a Philadelphia museum for several million dollars. Unwittingly, they turned it over to a federal agent posing as a museum buyer.

Now, even though the appeals court sent the case back to district court, federal and state prosecutors say they remain optimistic that the draft copy of the Bill of Rights, one of 14 that Washington sent out, will one day be available to the people of this state.

"We've all taken the position that it cannot be owned by a private party," U.S. Attorney Frank D. Whitney said in a phone interview from Phoenix.

The circuit judges did not rule out the possibility that ownership could be determined after the federal seizure of the document occurred. They leave it to those involved to prove ownership before and after the seizure.

"This is definitely a hurdle in our continuing litigation, but it is a very good signal," Whitney said. "This opinion actually signals an ultimate victory for the U.S. government and the state of North Carolina."

While the legal wrangling continues, the U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District of North Carolina has the parchment in a secure place.

"We're disappointed that the 4th Circuit didn't agree with Judge Boyle," said Noelle Talley, spokeswoman for N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper's office, "but we're confident that the trial court will move quickly to resolve the remaining issues so that North Carolina's copy of the Bill of Rights will come home to the people of our state."

Staff writer Anne Blythe can be reached at 932-8741 or ablythe@newsobserver.com