He’ll at least be spared the legal “em-bear-assment.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. won’t face charges for bizarrely dumping a black bear cub’s carcass in Central Park because his 2014 prank is beyond the statute of limitations for any crime or violation, according to legal experts and state wildlife officials.
Beyond that, no crime in New York law would apply to the independent presidential candidate’s admitted actions of stumbling over a roadkill carcass and deciding to skin it for meat, before, ultimately opting with his drunken buddies’ scheme to dump it in Central Park and make it look like a bicycle accident.
“That’s absolutely bonkers and he’s guilty of being crazy but apparently under the New York Agricultural and Markets Law dumping a dead bear carcass in Central Park and planting a bike to stage a fake cause of death is not a crime,” former Manhattan prosecutor Mark Bederow told The Post.
“If it was a domestic animal, you’re obligated to bury it underground several feet within 72 hours. But bears that you find dead, prefer to eat and then stage fake accidents in Central Park, apparently is not covered by the law.”
James Periconi, an environmental lawyer, said that while Kennedy did many wrong things, none appeared illegal.
“The short answer is that I don’t see any violations of the New York environmental conservation law that Mr. Kennedy may have committed,” Periconi said, though he noted Kennedy’s actions are outside his specialty.
“He certainly violated a number of recommended procedures for the handling of dead carcasses of wildlife, for example, by leaving the dead animal in Central Park, an area that is of course accessible to children and other people or domestic animals,” Periconi continued.
“That he posed himself with and next to and touching the dead carcass and its apparently bloody face or other body part was extremely reckless on his part, because of the potential for infection from a rabid animal,” the lawyer said — referring to a disturbing picture that emerged Monday of Kennedy posing with the animal in the back of his car.
The mutilated bear cub was found in October 2014 by two women walking their dogs near the Seventh Regiment Civil War memorial near West 69th Street and West Drive.
New Yorkers at the time puzzled over how the baby bear ended up in the park — with one West Side Rag commenter coming tantalizingly close to the truth — but no one suspected the culprit was a Kennedy family scion.
Even one of RFK Jr.’s cousins wrote about the mystery bear for the New York Times, not knowing her relative was behind it.
Kennedy, 70, finally revealed his role in the bruin brouhaha in a video with comedian Roseanne Barr designed to preempt a brewing story by the New Yorker.
He said he was driving to a falconry excursion with friends in Goshen, NY, when a motorist ahead of him hit and killed the young bear.
After Kennedy disturbingly posed for a photo with the dead cub, he drove to New York City with a plan to skin the animal and store its meat.
But he said a meeting that left him short on time, so he opted instead to stage a gruesome — if improbable — bike versus bear accident in the park.
The prank prompted an investigation by state Department of Environmental Conservation officials, who concluded through a forensic analysis that the cub died from blunt-force trauma consistent with a high-speed collision, the agency said Monday.
“The investigation was closed later that year due to a lack of sufficient evidence to determine if violations occurred,” according to a statement from the agency.
Kennedy, an environmental lawyer now on the outs with many of his former allies, said he had planned to obtain a bear tag to harvest the cub’s meat.
But he didn’t do that bear minimum under the state’s Environmental Conservation Law, which sets steps for people who want to keep roadkill meat, including reporting such crashes to law enforcement.
Illegally possessing bear without a tag and illegally disposing of a bear for violations that typically draw fines of up to $250 for a first offense.
Kennedy, however, is long past having to worry about such a piddly fine for not doing the bear necessities.
“The statute of limitations for these offenses is one year; charges cannot be brought for incidents that occurred more than one year ago,” the DEC’s statement reads.
