Thomas conviction tossed
by Kootenai Valley Record
August 13, 2009
After hearing arguments from both the defense and prosecution as to whether 18-year-old Stephen Thomas should be sentenced in youth or adult court for tampering with evidence while he was still 17, Judge Michael Prezeau ruled last week that neither court has jurisdiction and threw out the conviction.
Thomas was released from the county jail on Wednesday after spending more than a year behind bars. He was arrested in July 2008 along with his then 19-year-old girlfriend Heather Henson in connection with the shooting death of Larry Kingsley, 67, last summer at Sylvan Lake.
Henson was convicted last December of mitigated attempted deliberate homicide and was sentenced to 20 years under the supervision of the Montana Department of Corrections, with all but five years suspended. On July 1, a jury found Thomas not guilty of homicide and theft charges but guilty of evidence tampering.
Under state law, 17-year-olds charged with homicide and certain other crimes must be tried as adults. While the law does not include theft and evidence tampering, it allows those charges to be moved to adult court along with the homicide charge.
Following Thomas’ acquittal on the homicide charges, defense attorneys Ann German and John Putikka filed a motion to transfer the case back to youth court for sentencing on the evidence tampering conviction. County Attorney Bernie Cassidy opposed the motion, countering that state law requires the case to be transferred as a whole and makes no provision for moving individual charges back to youth court for sentencing.
In his ruling last week, Prezeau concluded that while the law may have allowed Thomas to be sentenced as an adult on all charges if he had been convicted of homicide, his acquittal on that charge now makes it "inconceivable" that he could be sentenced as an adult for evidence tampering.
Prezeau also found that although Thomas could have been prosecuted separately on the different charges in both youth and adult courts, youth court lost jurisdiction once the case was transferred.
The jury in Thomas’ case should have been instructed that if Thomas was found not guilty on the homicide charges, it should not consider the theft and evidence tampering charges.
Attorneys for both Henson and Thomas had argued in trial that the two were justified in shooting Kingsley because of the threat he posed to their lives. Henson and Thomas testified that Kingsley had been keeping them against their will at his campsite and had threatened to kill them if they tried to leave.
______________________________________
Editor’s Note: See the August 11, 2009 edition of the Kootenai Valley Record for the printed version of this story. The Kootenai Valley Record publishes once a week, on Tuesdays, in Libby, Montana. They are a locally owned community newspaper, located at 403 Mineral Avenue in Libby. For in-county and out-of-county subscription information, call 406-293-2424, or e-mail kvrecord@gmail.com.
|
