Looters, or just regular folk?

I may be stepping in it here, but I see the arrests and indictments of 24 people in the Blanding area as a perfect storm for testing the balance between the letter of the law and mercy. And the balance seems to be tilting toward the law.

Frankly, I don’t think many of those arrested could plead true ignorance of the law. True, they have gotten used to finding relics all over the place, including on their own property. That’s OK. But when they find it on public property, and especially when they try to sell what they have found … well, to borrow a phrase from another controversial issue — what part of illegal don’t they understand?
In this part of the world, when we read a story like this one about a man trying to sell Italian artifacts on eBay, many of us feel outrage. The looting of native American items here ought to fill us with the same anger. The more we learn about ancient cultures, the more we learn about ourselves, and this stuff can’t be replaced once it’s gone.
However, is it right to disrupt a small town by throwing people in prison for this?
On the one hand, someone like the 78-year-old director of the San Juan Visitor Center, an inductee into the Utah Tourism Hall of Fame, has demonstrated his love for ancient cultures by creating a scenic byway to promote understanding of ancient Americans.
On the other hand, he of all people should know better than to loot.
Maybe the feds could have been more delicate in how they arrested people, but everyone will have his or her day in court. And my guess is from now on a lot more people will understand just how serious it is to collect relics from land that belongs to all of us.