Bigfork kidnapper appeals case — again
courtesy photo
Chuck Devlinn
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HELENA – A man serving a 50-year sentence for the May 27, 2006 kidnapping of an 18-year old Whitefish woman at a Bigfork festival has again asked the Montana Supreme court to reconsider his case, this time saying that a 2013 ruling by the high court in another matter opens up a way to overturn his conviction.
In a self-written appeal Chuck Devlin said that he has spent the entirety of the 26 hours per year of legal library time allotted high security prisoners trying to produce new evidence to overturn his case. He has been imprisoned six years, in which time he has made several appeals that have been denied by the court.
Devlin said he expects this appeal will have the same result.
“My brief is probably incorrect, but I did my best to be clear and request lenity per the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments,” Devlin wrote.
In the brief, Devlin repeated a claim made in a previous appeal that he was only trying to help the 18-year-old woman that officers said was naked, afraid, and leapt from Devlin’s van to safety after someone reported screams to law enforcement.
In the appeal, Devlin drew a map of the crime scene that included Yellow Bay State Park and Woods Bay and references to where his vehicle was positioned at the time of his arrest and the position of the arresting officers’ patrol vehicles. Devlin said that if the officers had checked to see if the victim’s friends were at the park, he would have not have been taken to jail, because it would have been clear that he was merely returning the woman to her friends.
He said that the original mistrial in the case should have been examined for double jeopardy and lambasted those who participated in and covered the case.
“On March 26, 2007 (the case) proceeded to trial by jury,” Devlin wrote. “Defense counsel moved for mistrial after the state’s first witness, Officer Glenn Miller, was caught lying on the stand and attempting to introduce ‘banned’ information to inflame the jury. Officer Miller was responding to the Prosecutor Mark Russell’s pre-arranged ‘prompting and leading’ questions in an effort to inflame the current jury and/or cause a mistrial to get the ‘registered violent offender on parole’ and ‘officer caution’ statements into the ‘amped up’ media coverage in order to infect the small town jury pool with the banned inflammatory material, which they succeeded at quite admirably.”
Devlin blamed his defense counsel for not asking enough questions in the case when it went to trial for a second time, in which he was convicted after the jury initially deadlocked.
“You could tell some of the jurors were not comfortable with the decision completely, and the judge asked my attorney if he wanted to poll the jury,” Devlin wrote. “He refused.”
He claims the defense attorney said that they wouldn’t “fall on the sword” for Devlin in a separate bail jumping charge, and forced him to plead guilty.
Devlin claims his conviction is illegal.
“The court must vacate the conviction and dismiss, or remand for a new trial, or whatever else the court deems appropriate,” Devlin said.
The high court most recently denied an appeal from Devlin in January, saying it was filed in an improper and untimely manner.
Devlin, 64, is not eligible for parole until 2032.
