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Court throws out Demontiney verdictRocky Boy man is ordered freed, wont be tried again

Court throws out Demontiney verdict

Rocky Boy man is ordered freed, wont be tried again

A man convicted of killing his cousin at the Holiday Village Shopping Center nearly two years ago has been released from custody, after the Montana Supreme Court reversed the conviction.

Lionel Demontiney had been under house arrest while his conviction on a charge of deliberate homicide on June 1, 2001, was appealed.

The Supreme Court agreed Thursday with Demontiney's attorney that District Court Judge John Warner had given incorrect jury instructions at the end of the trial, which ended up with a flawed verdict. The high court also said Demontiney could not be tried again in the shooting death of Bryan Gopher.

John Connor, chief of the Special Prosecutions Unit at the state Attorney General's Office, took responsibility for the overturned conviction.

He said Thursday that one of his responsibilities was to review the jury instructions before the judge gave them, but didn't because he was busy working on closing arguments.

The Supreme Court said in its ruling that the prosecution had given correct jury instructions to the judge but that Warner didn't use them.

"(County Attorney David Rice) had me there to handle the very problem that occurred, and I blew it," Connor said. "In this particular instance, I just was not careful enough."

In November of 2000, Demontiney, who was 17 at the time, was at the mall with Gopher. The two were cousins, but had lived under the same roof for most of their lives.

While behind the building, the two men got in an argument. According to court documents, Gopher drew a gun on Demontiney, and a struggle ensued. Demontiney was successful in grabbing the gun from Gopher and putting it in his truck, court documents said.

Sometime after that, the struggle reignited, and Demontiney eventually shot Gopher once in the chest.

The trial lasted four days, and ended with Judge Warner instructing the jury to look at the charges in a descending order of seriousness. He told them to consider deliberate homicide first, then the charge of mitigated homicide, and negligent homicide last.

According to the Supreme Court opinion, the jury instructions should have instead asked them to examine the less-serious offenses first, then move on to deliberate homicide.

The jurors found Demontiney not guilty of deliberate homicide, and guilty of mitigated deliberate homicide.

That was a conclusion the jury could not possibly have reached, the court said.

Finding that Demontiney committed a crime involving all the elements of a deliberate homicide was necessary before a jury could convict him of the same crime with mitigating circumstances, the court reasoned. Once the jury decided Demontiney did not commit deliberate homicide, they could not legally find him guilty of the lesser crime, the majority said.

Demontiney never received a sentence for his conviction.

Shortly before sentencing was scheduled, the Supreme Court agreed to defense attorney Carl White's request that sentencing be put on hold during appeal.

Rice said that the County Attorney's Office will learn from this case.

"I believe in the system, I will respect the decision, and we won't make that mistake in the future," he said.

As for the case itself, Rice has words of sadness and warning.

"I am sad that Bryan Gopher died," he said. "This is what happens when you mix alcohol, anger and a gun."

Members of the jury had different opinions about the outcome of the appeal.

Charles Mikulecky of Rudyard said he is satisfied with the Supreme Court's decision.

"I don't think he's really any threat to anybody," Mikulecky said. "I felt the guy that got killed didn't have any business going out drinking with a gun in his belt anyway. I think he was the one who caused it in the first place."

Juror Lonna Knoll of Havre thinks the decision is wrong.

"There was a crime committed and I feel he should pay for it. You don't take another person's life," she said. "I don't feel that's right. It's not showing that our government's doing its work."

A press release provided White said the Supreme Court's ruling is "a decision well-grounded in logic and common sense."

 

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