Three men found responsible in the illegal beheadings of three bighorn sheep in rural Oregon won’t have to pay $25,000 each as penalties.

Judges in Gilliam and Wasco counties ruled this week that a state law meant to discourage poaching doesn’t empower them to order the men to pay the penalties -- even though prosecutors had argued that it did.

Justin Samora, 33, and Cody Plagmann, 37, were the subjects of a story in The Oregonian/OregonLive last weekend about the battle over forcing poachers to pay big money as a deterrent. The two friends were caught in April 2016 after a driver on Interstate 84 spotted one of them standing on a hillside over a dead bighorn sheep from a protected herd in the Columbia River Gorge in Gilliam County. Troopers found two black garbage bags -- each with the head of a bighorn sheep in it -- on the hillside.

The rulings also mark a victory for Jason Begay, 26, who was caught with a ram’s head in his house in Wasco County in May 2016. He claimed that he found the animal already dead and decided to cut off its head and take it home. But that was enough to convict him -- like Samora and Plagmann -- of an illegal taking or possession of wildlife.

Since the three men were arrested last year, state lawmakers have raised the penalty for illegally killing or possessing the body parts of a bighorn sheep from $25,000 to $50,000. That's one of more than a dozen penalties that lawmakers have increased as of Jan. 1: State law now calls for poachers to pay $7,500 for a cougar or a black bear; $15,000 for an elk with six-point antlers and $50,000 for a moose with antlers.

But defense attorneys for Samora, Plagmann and Begay argued that state law doesn’t explicitly say a judge can order defendants to pay up in criminal court as restitution.

Prosecutors say that’s precisely what the law was intended to do. In the past two months, judges in Linn and Benton counties have ordered at least four other men to pay $7,500 to $15,000 in restitution for killing elk, deer and at least one wild turkey.

But in written rulings on Samora's and Plagmann’s cases, Gilliam County Circuit Judge John Olson wrote that the law explicitly allows the State Fish and Wildlife Commission to file a lawsuit for $25,000 per sheep from the men, but it doesn’t say that the judge can order the defendants to pay.

Olson wrote that the commission is free to file a lawsuit if it so chooses.

In Begay’s case, Wasco County Circuit Judge Janet Stauffer wrote that the prosecution hadn’t proven that Begay’s crime directly resulted in the loss of $25,000 in tangible "economic damages" to the state.

Mike Arnold, Plagmann's defense attorney, described the arrest and prosecution of his client "a disappointing waste of resources."

"All Cody (Plagmann) and the co-defendant (Samora) did was cut off the heads of two already dead rams," Arnold wrote in an email to The Oregonian/OregonLive. "There is no economic loss to the state for a dead ram in two pieces versus one."

Although the three men have so far avoided the huge penalties, they still will have misdemeanor convictions on their records.

Begay is scheduled to be sentenced in June.

Plagmann and Samora, who already have been sentenced, were ordered to one year of probation, 40 to 80 hours of community service, a three-year ban from hunting and fines ranging from $1,500 to $2,000. Plagmann also received a 40-day jail sentence.

-- Aimee Green