CASE NOT CLOSED Wylie Hunter is a convicted pot smuggler. He served 10 years in prison. Now he's trying to put North Idaho's legal system on trial

Early last year, a Coeur d’Alene defense attorney sought help from a high-profile law firm in Wyoming, spelling out a series of grievances aimed at the local judiciary.

Public defender Stacia Hagerty accused Coeur d’Alene’s First District Court and its officers of mishandling a criminal case that has ground through the court system for almost 12 years.

“You won’t believe the actions the state has taken in the year and a half I have been fighting this matter,” Hagerty wrote to the law firm of Jackson, Wyo., attorney Gerry Spence. “I think there is real corruption behind it.”

Spence has built a national reputation winning cases for “ordinary people” like Randy Weaver of Ruby Ridge, and Karen Silkwood.

Hagerty represents a convicted felon named Wiley Hunter, who spent 10 years in prison after Idaho State Police found 75 pounds of marijuana in the trunk of his rental car during a 2007 traffic stop in Hayden.

Hunter, a former body builder and Coeur d’Alene gym owner, is now 63 and riding out his parole in a local halfway house. He has never stopped trying to bring to light the issues Hagerty wrote about to the Spence law firm.

“I believe that, but for the misconduct of the state and the failures of prior defense attorneys, (my client) would have prevailed in his motion to suppress (evidence),” Hagerty wrote.

In a case that began in 2007, Hunter attempted to use footage from a police car camera to suppress evidence he claims would have countered police testimony. However, the video and audio was never turned over to defense attorneys, and court records show that at least two key state’s witnesses likely lied — grievances that were not acted upon when they were brought before the court.

In his years behind bars, Hunter suffered from an untreated MRSA infection that caused him to lose his teeth and scarred his body. He suffered a broken bone in his foot, also untreated, and two dislocated shoulders as a result of a crash when he was being transported in a prison van. Hunter’s wife divorced him while he was in prison, and he did not see his children for a decade.

His co-defendant, Chase Storlie, spent fewer than three years behind bars.

“I guess they were really in for me,” said Hunter, a large man with white hair and a beard.

Hagerty said that in hearings, Idaho State Police testified that evidence which could have been used to free Hunter had been destroyed. That’s a violation not just of the law, but of the state police department’s own rules governing the preservation of felony evidence.

As the sole proprietor of Hunter’s post-conviction effort, Hagerty said she has been stymied and stonewalled by the Coeur d’Alene court as she’s tried bringing forward Hunter’s post-conviction case, expected to be heard next month in Boise at the state’s court of appeals.

THE BUST

Hunter was arrested on a warm September day in 2007 after he and a former Lake City High School football standout named Chase Ryan Storlie were stopped by an Idaho State Police trooper on U.S. 95 near Honeysuckle Avenue.

Both men already had criminal histories. Storlie’s crimes were mostly alcohol-related offenses. Hunter, who owned a gym at the Sunset Mall and sold Harley Davidson motorcycles and high-end cars from a Sherman Avenue storefront to dealers and individuals in the U.S. and Canada, had been convicted of a felony and spent four months behind bars for illegally bringing more than $167,000 of unaccounted cash over the Canadian border.

Idaho State Police Detective Terry Morgan testified that Hunter had for a decade been on the radar of police. Referring to Hunter as a “department project,” Morgan suspected Hunter was trafficking high-quality, hydroponically grown marijuana from Canada into the U.S. via North Idaho and selling the bulk of it to wealthy clients in Arizona.

The sky was the color of a robin’s egg that Labor Day weekend with temperatures in the 70s and promising to hit a dime higher as Hunter, Storlie and his pet bulldog drove south on U.S. 95 in a rented, white, 2007 Impala — the same kind of vehicle used by police.

“I used it because the trunk was sealed,” Hunter said later. “No smell gets out of the trunk.”

Hunter and Storlie were stopped by an Idaho State Police trooper near Honeysuckle Avenue, for speeding and illegally changing lanes, although no evidence was ever presented regarding that claim.

Hunter, according to testimony, claimed to be driving the speed limit because he was caught in Labor Day traffic from Silverwood Theme Park — and because he had 75 pounds of marijuana in his car.

“Why would I be speeding or driving erratically?” Hunter says now, almost 12 years after the incident. “It doesn’t make sense.”

No traffic citations were ever written or added to the state’s evidence.

Morgan, who is now retired after more than 30 years on the force, had become desperate, Hunter says.

THE STOP

Hunter maintains he had been careful as he headed south on U.S. 95, paying intricate attention to the law, when he was stopped at Morgan’s request by Trooper Ron Sutton south of Hayden Avenue.

Sutton wrote in his report that Morgan, a veteran officer and investigator, had told him to pull over the Impala around 1:30 p.m. for driving 75 mph in a 65 mph zone.

Per Hunter’s recollection, Morgan asked Sutton at the scene if he smelled marijuana, and Sutton replied that he could not smell any marijuana coming from inside the car.

In his report filed after the incident, Sutton wrote that later in the traffic stop, he smelled a “very faint odor of marijuana” coming from the front passenger’s side.

The conversation might have been recorded by the trooper’s car camera, but that evidence was destroyed, according to ISP.

Hunter says Morgan walked to the driver’s side window and, without a warrant, reached inside the car to pull the keys from the ignition.

Morgan reviewed Hunter’s rental agreement and noted the 216 miles added to the odometer since the car was rented earlier that day from the Avis lot in downtown Coeur d’Alene. The distance from Coeur d’Alene to the Boundary County town of Eastport on the Canadian border is 109 miles.

After more than a half hour, in which Hunter was detained, cuffed and seated on the car’s bumper, according to police reports, a U.S. Forest Service K9 arrived and the dog’s behavior changed, according to officers. The dog then jumped inside the Impala, where it alerted to the possible presence of drugs in the back seat.

The handler, Mark Reinking, called the dog’s reaction a positive hit and Morgan popped the Impala’s trunk to reveal 75 pounds of high grade BC Bud.

The marijuana had been heat-sealed and double-bagged. The bags were slathered with wheel grease inside two hockey duffels.

SEARCH SCRUTINIZED

Police reports claim probable cause to search the trunk was obtained when Trooper Sutton walked around the car to the passenger side and detected a faint smell of marijuana. A local expert mechanic testified that the scent of pot was released from the passenger side window because a ventilation system in the trunk blew air into the cab’s passenger area.

The state’s expert witness, mechanic Richard Shabazian, who worked for a local Chevrolet dealership, told the court that circulation increased several minutes after the car stopped, blowing the air from the trunk into the cab of the Impala.

But Shabazian’s testimony was later refuted in Hunter’s post-conviction case with affidavits and a schematic from Chevrolet. Defense attorney Peter Jones of Coeur d’Alene, who briefly represented Hunter, said in a deposition that the trunk ventilation system was a ploy used by state police to get marijuana convictions.

“We had a couple of big marijuana cases, and the car ventilation was an issue in a couple of them,” Jones said.

The questionable testimony didn’t end there. A state’s witness, Misty Whited, who reportedly worked at the Avis agency, testified she had rented the car to Hunter on the morning of the bust. Hagerty and Hunter believe Whited was a police informant who did not work at the the rental lot.

Whited testified that the rented car was picked up from the arrest scene along U.S. 95, and that it smelled so strongly of marijuana after the bust that it required detailing in Spokane — another key piece of evidence that was later shown to be false.

“We got a call from law enforcement to pick up the vehicle,” Whited testified. “I saw the vehicle the next morning. We had the doors down and windows down because of the smell of marijuana.”

CAR INCONSISTENCIES

Kootenai County deputy prosecutor Ann Wick failed to turn over to Hunter’s defense counsel the rental agreement, which would have cleared up the matter of Whited’s identity and whether she even worked at the Avis agency. State police later claimed the rental agreement was destroyed along with Hunter’s felony case file, contrary to regulations requiring felony case files to be archived indefinitely.

In 2017, Hagerty secured from Avis corporate headquarters a document the company kept regarding the 2007 rental. It showed the car was not returned to the Fourth Street rental lot until three days after the bust, contrary to Whited’s testimony. Another piece of evidence secured by Hagerty showed the car was inventoried at ISP’s Coeur d’Alene headquarters. Hagerty said that meant the car was not taken to Spokane to be detailed, as Whited had testified. Just 6 miles had been added to the odometer — which happens to be the same distance from ISP to the car rental agency’s Fourth Street lot. Finally, Hunter’s credit card, which was still on file, was never charged the alleged detailing job.

Avis franchise owner Frank Gabriel, who died in 2010, could have shed light on Whited’s testimony but despite being subpoenaed, Gabriel was not called as a witness. Gabriel’s wife, Janette, said she cannot recall if Whited, 26 at the time, worked at the family’s Avis lot.

“He had a lot of kids work there,” Janette Gabriel said.

Police also claim to have found drug ledgers in the Impala, similar to ledgers ISP detectives found months before the Labor Day bust, when they searched a Coeur d’Alene hotel room where Hunter stayed with his family. The ledgers were used in testimony without ever being presented to the court, or to defense attorneys in discovery because, Hunter claims, the ledgers in the car did not exist.

“They made it up,” he said.

DISQUALIFICATION DENIED

As evidence of police and prosecutorial misconduct stacked up, Hagerty, frustrated at the court’s failure to review the new evidence in post-conviction proceedings, filed a motion to disqualify District Judge Lansing Haynes, who presided over the case, for failing to address the “state’s continuous failure to follow the law,” for failing to take action “about the detective’s false sworn statement,” and for denying Hunter’s requests for discovery that “is in the possession of the state and could prove fraud on the court.”

Haynes, a former prosecutor, denied the request to have another judge take over.

In a memorandum filed in district court dated March 2, 2018, two months after contacting the Spence firm, Hagerty laid out a list of 12 exhibits that directly refuted the state’s claims.

One of the items was the sworn affidavit of deputy attorney general Stephanie Nemore, an attorney for ISP, which the court used in two post-conviction hearings to deny Hunter’s request for evidence. Nemore stated the case files and evidence were destroyed “per Idaho State Police procedure” in 2013 and 2015, respectively. Yet the case files in ISP’s possession were copied by appellate attorneys two years later.

Other evidence that was later uncovered and which contradicted the state’s evidence did not prompt the court to reopen the investigation. That evidence includes the Avis rental document showing that 6 miles were added to the odometer, not the additional 70 miles that a trip to Spokane for detailing would require; an ISP inventory slip proving the car was not immediately returned to Avis as Whited had testified, but was combed through by police at ISP headquarters; and court records in which deputy prosecutor Ann Wick, now a U.S. attorney in Pocatello, confirmed the presence of a police car DVD before later denying it, and not turning the DVD over to the defense.

“The general issue of material fact is found in the plethora of accumulated instances where state employees, prosecutors, ISP employees and officers acted in violation of the rules and regulations they are required to follow,” Hagerty wrote. “The overwhelming amount of wrong or erroneous acts clearly demonstrate that (Hunter’s) rights were violated.”

In no other case had Hagerty encountered prosecutors and a court so willing to disregard requests for exculpatory evidence — evidence that is favorable to the defendant — by either ignoring the requests or replying that the evidence was destroyed, Hagerty wrote.

“(It) clearly demonstrates that there is a lack of integrity for justice occurring yet today,” she wrote.

Greg Stovall, a Billings private investigator hired early on by Hunter to help him compile evidence that his defense attorneys failed to secure, said Hunter’s case is an anomaly.

“I’ve been doing this for 35 years and I have never seen anything like this,” Stovall said. “It’s like they had it all planned. Like it was a sell-out deal. There was no discovery and no compel motions.”

A LONE VOICE

Meanwhile, Hunter sleeps in the halfway house in Coeur d’Alene, on a bedbug-infested mattress that’s placed on a concrete floor in a basement room he pays $200 a month to rent. He lives off $17 a day, reads by a bright light bulb, and goes to the library or meets with attorneys.

He wants to file a “fraud upon the court” lawsuit against the First District judiciary. So-called “fraud upon the court” occurs when the judicial machinery itself has been compromised, such as when an attorney, who is an officer of the court, is involved in fraud or makes material misrepresentations to the court. Fraud upon the court voids the orders and judgments of that court.

Most of the 20 or more attorneys Hunter has talked to are not interested. The few who have shown interest do not want to sign their names to the lawsuit, but would help him prepare the paperwork for a fee. Hagerty’s request for help from the Spence law firm was politely declined.

Spokane attorney Steve Hormel, in an October letter to Hunter, said he considered the fraud but “I have determined that my office does not have the current resources nor the time to advise you about any civil action you may or may not have …”

So far no one has opted to pursue the case.

The rejections have not caused Hunter to slow down.

“If they could do this to me, who else have they done this to?” he said.

Hunter was allowed to travel to Boise last week, according to his attorney, to give state public defenders 37 exhibits material to his second post-conviction appeal. It’s evidence they say they’d asked the local prosecutor’s office for, but didn’t receive.

“This is all I do,” Hunter said. “This is all I think about. This has become my whole life.”