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Supreme Court rules twice in teen texting case

by Whitefish Pilot
| January 19, 2011 9:36 AM

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.