Judge: Man charged in brutal winter beating will remain in prison

What First District Judge Richard Christensen remembers most about a 20-year-old Coeur d’Alene man convicted of beating a former schoolmate and leaving him barefoot and half clothed on a frozen hillside is one particular photograph.

At a reduction of sentence hearing Friday for Nolan Mullen-Huber, who is serving between five and 15 years in prison for robbery and drug crimes, Christensen recalled an image he was shown as he presided over Mullen-Huber’s case.

“I was shown photos of the defendant posing as a drug dealer with weapons in the picture,” Christensen said Friday in his Coeur d’Alene courtroom before denying a plea for leniency for Mullen-Huber.

“I recall the testimony of the victim … and how the victim had been lured to a place and that the defendant masterminded this,” Christensen said. “I appreciate the defendant is using his (prison) time wisely, but a sentence reduction would denigrate the crime … This was nothing less than an act of terrorism.”

Mullen-Huber was the ringleader of a Coeur d’Alene gang of young men who sold drugs, and who robbed, stripped and beat a 20-year-old on a winter night at Potlatch Hill.

Mullen-Huber had hired teenage girls to lure Terrel Fruechtl, 20, to a remote area at the edge of Coeur d’Alene before Fruechtl was pistol whipped, beaten in the face and his nose broken.

Fruechtl’s clothes, money and keys were stolen and Fruechtl was left bloody, wearing just his underclothes on a frigid February night last year.

Deputy prosecutor Art Verharen said Mullen-Huber considered himself an up-and-coming drug dealer who was seldom without his handgun and the high-capacity magazine that he used in the attack.

“It’s a 9 mm semi auto with a 19-round extended clip that he strikes Mr. Fruechtl in the face with,” Verharen said at a hearing earlier this year. “It has leverage, it has weight, there’s a lot of power in it … he beats Mr. Fruechtl with the pistol in the face … Any one of those blows could have killed him.”

Public defenders asked that Mullen-Huber’s sentence be reduced because of his age, and how well Mullen-Huber was doing in prison.

Mullen-Huber told the court via telephone Friday that he had earned his GED and an enrollment in a college program. He said the charges he was convicted of were his only adult charges.

“I’m doing anything I can to better myself,” Mullen-Huber told the court. “I made a huge mistake, and I’ve learned from it, and I’ve grown.”

Deputy public defender Linda Payne asked the court to reduce the sentence or to place Mullen-Huber on a rider so he could get more counseling before being released early on probation.

Before denying the motion for a reduction, Christensen said he remembered also that the victim suffers from PTSD because of his beating, and is unable to sleep. Christensen said the sentence is within the limits for similar convictions.

Mullen-Huber is not eligible for parole until February 2024.