Supreme Court rules twice in teen texting case
Despite numerous motions and objections
by defense attorneys, the trial of an Evergreen teenager charged
with two counts of deliberate homicide is scheduled to be held in a
Flathead County court beginning Jan. 24.
Justine Winter, 17, is accused of
driving her car into oncoming traffic on U.S. 93 between Kalispell
and Whitefish in March 2009 in an alleged suicide attempt.
The crash killed 35-year-old Columbia
Falls resident Erin Thompson and her 13-year-old son, Caden Odell.
Thompson was four months pregnant at the time. She was well known
in Whitefish and worked at Sage Spa & Salon.
The Montana Supreme Court weighed in
twice on the Winter case in recent weeks, including a Dec. 28,
2010, ruling against a request by defense attorneys David Stufft
and Maxwell Battle to disqualify Flathead County District Court
Judge Katherine Curtis from presiding over the case.
Stufft and Battle had argued Curtis
should be disqualified for personal bias or prejudice against
Winter. But in an order signed by five Supreme Court justices, the
court ruled that evidence presented by Winter’s attorneys consisted
only of Curtis’ rulings, and that those concerns could be examined
on appeal at the conclusion of the District Court case.
Curtis has ruled that Winter be tried
as an adult, and she denied Stufft’s requests to move the trial out
of Northwest Montana. If convicted, Winter faces from 10 to 100
years in prison, or life imprisonment.
Stufft had also objected to Curtis’
order that effectively barred Winter’s father from court during the
trial because he is listed as a witness. Citing Winter’s age and
her “significant brain trauma,” Stufft had asked that the Supreme
Court exercise emergency supervisory control over District
Court.
In her Jan. 5 response, Curtis told the
high court that Stufft had never objected or provided evidence as
to the exclusion of Winter’s father from the courtroom, and that
Winter’s mother had never been barred from the courtroom during
trial.
The high court dismissed Stufft’s
request in a Jan. 7 ruling, and the Flathead County Attorney’s
Office subsequently withdrew its objection to allowing Winter’s
father in the courtroom, satisfying the Supreme Court.
Back in September, Winter’s attorneys
had subpoenaed the editor and publisher of the Daily Inter Lake,
Frank Miele and Rick Weaver, along with several people who had
commented on the newspaper’s stories on the case, in an effort to
move the trial out of Northwest Montana.
Some online comments had called for the
death penalty. Seven of the people who commented appeared at a
Sept. 15 hearing, where Stufft argued that the comments had tainted
the jury pool.
Kalispell resident Wendy Forwoodson,
whose son was a friend of Odell, said she was “dumbfounded” that
she had been called to testify and “actually thought there was
freedom of speech and you can write whatever you want.”
Three subpoenaed individuals did not
appear at the Sept. 15 hearing, including Miele and Weaver. An
attorney representing the newspaper had asked that their subpoenas
be quashed based on the state’s Media Confidentiality Act. After
Curtis ordered Miele and Weaver to testify, and limited the scope
of questioning allowed, the two testified to the size of the Inter
Lake’s paid circulation.
Curtis also ruled that the vehicles
from the crash be allowed as evidence in the trial, despite
Stufft’s claim that the vehicles had been vandalized while in
storage. She also ruled that Winter will be allowed to testify
about her own injuries from the crash.
With the request to move the trial out
of Northwest Montana still pending in late October, Stufft
requested that Winter’s case be moved to Youth Court. His request
was based on a report by a forensic linguist hired by the
prosecutors who concluded that Winter’s “text messages are not
consistent with generally accepted characteristics of suicide
notes.” Curtis ordered a hearing be held to determine whether or
not forensic linguists for both sides be allowed to testify in
Winter’s trial.
In early November, Curtis ruled that
the defense had failed to show that the jury pool had been
“inflamed” by news coverage of the Winter case. Many of the
comments were motivated by accurate coverage of a civil lawsuit
filed by Winter’s father against Thompson’s estate, she said.
Curtis also ruled that the court would
use the jury selection process to determine whether a fair trial
could be held in Flathead County. The trial, which had been slated
to begin Nov. 8, was postponed after defense attorneys requested
more time.