Theft sentence revoked for fourth time

A 51-year-old Columbia Falls man was re-sentenced in Flathead County District Court after his earlier sentence for theft was revoked for the fourth time.

Judge Heidi Ulbricht sentenced Stuart Stratton on Aug. 21 to two three-year consecutive sentences under the Montana Department of Corrections for theft in 2000 and forgery in 2004.

In the second case, Stratton was charged with forging 12 checks totaling less than $500. He initially received a suspended sentence for each case but subsequently racked up probation violations over the next decade.

Violations included failing to report or attend mandatory counseling, and testing positive for morphine and marijuana. He was charged with DUI and obstructing a police officer following an arrest at Mike’s Conoco in Columbia Falls in July 2010.

Petitions to revoke Stratton’s sentences were filed in district court in June 2004, July 2007, November 2010 and August 2011.

In a seven-page handwritten letter sent to Judge Stewart Stadler in June 2009, Stratton described how his life had changed after starting out working for Canyon Logging, an oil exploration company and Plum Creek and buying a home in Columbia Falls in 1994.

Stratton claimed his family broke up after he hit his wife’s boyfriend on Plum Creek property and lost his job. Later, after he was injured when he fell off a ladder, he started using painkillers.

What followed, Stratton wrote, was a downward spiral — he lost his house, forged checks he found in a Dumpster, got into gambling, and turned more and more to lying and manipulating others. But, he told the judge in 2009, his life had changed around.