Dallas Says He Shouldn’t Lose Credit Convicted Killer Could Face Extra Year For Not Testifying

A man convicted of killing two state Fish and Game officers should not lose a year of good time credit because he refused to testify at a disciplinary hearing for his escape from prison, his attorney says.

Self-styled mountain man Claude Dallas, Jr., escaped from the Idaho State Correctional Institution on March 30, 1986. Following his capture about 11 months later, he was found guilty in a disciplinary hearing of escape and destruction of state property for cutting a prison fence.

The Idaho Court of Appeals on Wednesday heard an appeal by the state against a district court ruling that by scheduling the disciplinary hearing before the criminal escape trial, the state may have improperly forced Dallas to choose between the two punishments.

He lost a year of good time against his 30-year sentence. The state then charged him with felony escape. A jury acquitted him, accepting the idea Dallas escaped to avoid injury or death by prison guards.

Dallas, now being held in a Kansas prison for his conviction on two voluntary manslaughter charges and a firearms enhancement charge, contends he refused to testify because he did not want information disclosed there to be used against him in his escape trial.

“His acquittal says he didn’t break the law, so the state can’t discriminate against him,” said Dallas’ attorney Dennis Benjamin, calling his silence a “strategic choice.”

But Deputy Attorney General Tim McNeese told the appellate court that the burdens of proof between a disciplinary hearing and a trial are very different.

The appellate court took the case under advisement.