Bigfork kidnapper denied parole

The Montana Supreme Court was not persuaded by a convicted kidnapper’s claims that he deserves a new trial for abducting an intoxicated 18-year-old woman in Bigfork in 2006.

Last week the Montana high court denied a second petition for post-conviction relief from Charles Devlin. The denial means Devlin, 66, will remain ineligible for parole until he is 83 years old and has served at least half of the 50-year prison sentence for kidnapping handed down by Lake County District Judge Deborah Kim Christopher. 

He also is serving two sentences for bail jumping — one for five years and another for 10 years. In addition, he has not discharged a 10-year persistent felony offender sentence from 1994 that was reset by parole violations that stemmed from his conviction. 

In the unanimous ruling, the high court upheld a Flathead District Court ruling that Devlin’s appeal was unclear, repetitive and did not provide the court with adequate support to warrant examination of new evidence. 

“Devlin’s claims of ‘actual innocence’ consisted of an August 14, 2010, letter penned by an anonymous ‘concerned Lake County citizen’ and sent to Devlin in prison,” Supreme Court Justice Patricia Cotter wrote in the ruling. 

“The letter claimed that Devlin’s 2006 arresting officer is a habitual liar and that the staff of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office and judge presiding over Devlin’s proceedings knew this. Devlin contends that he needs a new trial based on this letter. Devlin also presented a news article published in a Missoula news article dated December 10, 2010, addressing a young Missoula man who pled guilty to felony criminal endangerment after abandoning an intoxicated minor to whom he had provided alcohol.” 

Aside from the limited and unconvincing “new evidence,” Cotter noted that Devlin’s appeal was filed after the deadline for filing for post-conviction relief. 

Devlin has filed multiple detailed appeals since his conviction, all of which have been denied or ignored by the Montana Supreme Court. 

In the self-written appeals, Devlin has claimed that he was trying to help return the intoxicated woman to her friends and took her into his van to shelter her from a thunderstorm. He gives no explanation in the appeals as to how or why the woman was reported by sheriff’s deputies to have leaped from the van naked and scared in an attempt to escape from him. The deputies responded after a resident heard screams coming from the van. 

In the appeals, Devlin has called his imprisonment a “gross miscarriage of justice.”