Departing county attorney discusses her time in Havre

Gina Dahl has served as Hill County Attorney for eight years, and November will be her last month before moving to Billings, where she will be the assistant city attorney.

"I think I've done my best for Hill County. I've worked really hard for Hill County, and I don't regret any of that," Dahl said Friday. "I think this is a great community and I'm proud to have served it."

It was time for a change, Dahl said, and she looks forward to having a lighter workload.

"In my new position I'm looking forward to a more manageable pace, a more manageable workload. ... The workload here is pretty demanding. It's pretty demanding all the time," she said.

As county attorney, Dahl said, she's always needed more help and that's because the county usually struggles to raise revenue. If her office were to receive more money, she said it would most likely have to be taken from somewhere else.

"And so you're always stretched thin, and it's difficult," she said.

Dahl has been especially stretched thin since August, when both of her deputy attorneys left Havre.

Carolyn Gray left Aug. 12 to work in the Cascade County prosecutor's office and Ryan Mickelson left Aug. 5 to work in the Missoula County attorney's office. Dahl said both former deputies took jobs to be closer to home.

The county has filled one of the deputy attorney positions. Robert McCamey is a retired California highway patrol who went to law school in Virginia before moving to Montana.

Dahl said the deputy attorney positions in Hill County are usually entry-level positions.

"I often hire new attorneys straight out of law school," she said.

As for her replacement, County Commissioner Mike Wendland said Monday that the open county attorney position has not been filled. One applicant so far has applied for the job, which is listed on the Montana Bar Association with a starting salary of $94,000.

"We're just in the preliminary stages of this job process," Wendland said.

Wendland is confident the commissioners will get some good applicants, and said it is possible they'll find someone before Dahl's departure. If not, he said, help is available from the Attorney General's office should it be needed.

Dahl has another month and some change to go as Hill County attorney, but she may have reason to visit sooner rather than later.

During her 13 years in Havre - eight of them as county attorney - Dahl met and married James Dahl, who works for the Hill County Sheriff's Office. She said her husband is supportive of her move but, for now, he will not be moving to Billings because he's close to retirement.

"We may be long-distance for a while. It'll be tough, but we can do it. We've got a really strong relationship," she said. "We'll be okay."

Looking back at her time as county attorney, Dahl discussed some of the things she's most proud of.

"What has always been most rewarding for me is simply getting justice for people who don't necessarily want the protection of the law - don't think they need it - but the ones who are most desperately in need of it," she said. "When I say that, I mean people like - a lot of it is domestic violence victims or sexual assault victims."

Dahl said people get stuck in the domestic violence cycle - "because, of course, they love their partner" - and oftentimes don't want their assailants prosecuted, or don't think they need help. But those are exactly the people who need the help the most, because they're stuck in that cycle, she said.

"And when we can get that help for them to break that cycle - that's what has been great. It's difficult and it doesn't always happen, and sometimes they fall back into the cycle, but that means a lot to help them," she said. "That's what's most rewarding for me is to just get justice."

Although she has learned over the years to separate work from her personal life, Dahl said, being county attorney has been emotionally taxing at times - "It's always with you."

But she has found ways to deal with it, she added.

"I do my best to not get emotionally involved. I think I have always been pretty reasonable and fair. You do your best to stay objective. Truly, I want the truth to come out," she said.

Dahl said what scares her most, what she's most cautions about, is prosecuting somebody and obtaining a conviction on somebody who did not commit an offense.

"I don't want that to happen," she said.

Dahl said she doesn't know if she ever got a conviction on someone who was not guilty, but she has never taken a case a trial if she didn't believe someone was guilty.

"If I didn't believe in the facts of the case, I wouldn't take that case to trial," she said. "Absolutely not."

As county attorney, she said, it wasn't uncommon to reduce charges down or dismiss a case after more information became available.

"Things have developed and you speak with witnesses and you realize 'I'm not really sure this happened the way it was reported,'" she said.

As an investigation moves ahead, it's possible for new information to challenge initial outlooks and change the course of the investigation.

"Sometimes victims and witnesses are misunderstood, or there's miscommunications ­- or perhaps they don't tell the truth. And then when you're sitting there talking to them, you realize that this isn't exactly the way it was, and I'm going to do what I think is right, which is either dismissing or charging what they should've been charged with in the first place," she said.

During her tenure, laws have been passed, and Dahl said one has made her job a little more difficult.

"The DUI laws are really difficult to work with. Over the years, penalties have changed a lot and right now it is such that a felony DUI has - fourth or subsequent - has a mandatory commitment to department of corrections for 13 months and then that's followed by up to five years of probation," she said.

The mandatory aspect makes it hard to be flexible when determining a sentence; it makes it difficult to negotiate or to propose a different sentence. Dahl said that sometimes cases go to trial that probably shouldn't go to trial, that maybe a person might have taken responsibility had they not faced that penalty for 13 months.

"Don't get me wrong - a lot of people really need that intensive kind of treatment. It's everybody's right to go to trial and I get that," she said. "But sometimes when there's not a lot of flexibility in the penalties and they're just mandatory sentences, that makes it more difficult."

Dahl said she is excited to leave, but will keep up with Havre happenings and the community will always take up room in her heart.

"I'll miss the community. Everybody knows everybody and everybody is so great to everybody and it's a really supportive community," she said. "It won't be the same. Everybody is just so accommodating and so helpful and it's just that kind of community. And I'll really miss that."