Hunter alleges fraud on the court

First in a three-part series

By RALPH BARTHOLDT

Staff Writer

Earlier this summer, a Coeur d’Alene process server delivered 14 boxes of court documents to defendants who are usually at the opposite end of paper service.

Steve Reed, who delivers subpoenas for law firms and public agencies to notify recipients they are defendants in legal actions, dropped off boxes at the offices of the Kootenai County prosecutor, a First District judge, several defense attorneys, the Idaho State Police and a Post Falls private detective.

All were ordered to respond to accusations filed against them.

The attorney general’s office and a U.S. attorney in Spokane were also subpoenaed, along with a former Coeur d’Alene auto mechanic.

The case stems from the marijuana conviction more than a decade ago of Coeur d’Alene resident Wiley Hunter. He accuses defense attorneys and prosecutors of colluding, falsifying evidence and repeatedly using false evidence in court to railroad him into a 15-year prison sentence, the maximum sentence for trafficking marijuana — and one not usually handed down.

Hunter has filed two motions in U.S. Court that allege lower courts relied on phony evidence provided by prosecutors and state police, evidence that was not scrutinized by his defense attorneys when the courts ruled against Hunter in a series of hearings, including several that came after he was convicted.

Hunter’s accusation, called Fraud on the Court, occurs when the “judicial machinery itself has been tainted, such as when an attorney, who is an officer of the court, is involved in the perpetration of a fraud or makes material misrepresentations to the court,” according to Black’s Law Dictionary.

It means that attorneys improperly influenced the court in its decisions, or that the unsuccessful party was prevented by fraudulent means or deception from presenting its full case to the court.

If a higher court finds fraud upon the court, it voids previous orders and judgments of that court.

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For more than a decade, Hunter has contended he was marked by police and prosecutors who had no legally-obtained evidence against him, prompting them to fabricate evidence and collude with defense attorneys to send him to prison.

Now he wants his conviction overturned.

The 63-year-old was arrested in 2007 while traveling south on U.S. 95 through Hayden with 75 pounds of Canada-grown marijuana in wheel grease-lathered, double vacuum-sealed bags in the trunk of his rental car. Hunter argues Idaho State Police had no probable cause to stop or search his rental car and had instead falsified evidence that was used throughout court proceedings to convict him and, later, to deny his post-conviction requests.

Hunter says the Kootenai County prosecutor’s office was complicit in repeatedly using false evidence in Coeur d’Alene First District Court, a Second District Court and the Idaho Supreme Court. He alleges that prosecutors — and his attorneys — failed to produce a DVD recording from an Idaho State Police car camera. He says that footage would have led to a dismissal of his case.

Although the DVD’s existence is shown in court records, the DVD was never entered into evidence because prosecutors repeatedly asserted it had been destroyed by police, despite state police protocol prohibiting the destruction of felony evidence.

Hunter also alleges the testimony provided by a state’s witness, Misty Whited, whom defense attorneys accused of being a confidential police informant, was proven to be fabricated, and that a mechanical device in Hunter’s rental car — which the state relied on as irrefutable evidence — was later shown to have been phony.

The lower court refused to accept the new evidence in post-conviction proceedings, Hunter contends, and his defense attorneys, despite collecting more than $30,000 in legal fees and promising to secure the police DVD, failed to file motions to compel, legal orders that would have required the state to turn over exculpatory evidence.

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The neatly packaged boxes Reed delivered this summer containing Hunter’s 352-page court motion didn’t reach Whited, a defendant in the case who worked briefly at a Coeur d’Alene Avis business where Hunter used to rent cars when he drove to Canada to buy and transport marijuana through Coeur d’Alene to Arizona.

Hunter sold the cannabis to clients in Scottsdale, who preferred the hydroponically grown Canadian pot to the product referred to as “dirt weed” that can be purchased along the border.

In court proceedings in 2007 and 2008, Whited testified that Hunter’s rental car smelled so strongly of pot that it had to be driven with the windows rolled down to a Spokane auto detail shop from the scene of the traffic stop near U.S. 95 and Honeysuckle Avenue.

Contrary to the woman’s court testimony, which was used repeatedly against Hunter, evidence unearthed later showed that state police didn’t release the car to Avis after Hunter’s arrest.

Instead, the Idaho State Police took the 2007 Impala into custody to inventory its contents, a common police procedure. It wasn’t returned to Avis until several days later.

By then, Whited’s testimony had been used several times to show the car smelled strongly of green pot, which gave police probable cause to search the Impala.

Idaho State Police refused to accept a subpoena for Whited, whom Hunter alleges is a police informant, and who also uses the name Misty Smith, nor would they accept the box containing the motion, Reed said.

Private detectives he routinely uses to find people were unable to locate Whited, who until recently had a Post Falls residence but is thought to be living in California.

The boxes that bounced around in Reed’s vehicle as he hand-delivered them across the county and across the border in Spokane contained 28 exhibits detailing the findings of Hunter and his post-conviction attorney, Stacia Hagerty. She no longer represents Hunter in the case.

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The series continues Sunday. The reporter can be reached at rbartholdt@cdapress.com.