Court Asked To Let Judges Fix Injustice New Trial Sought For Man Convicted Of Rape-Kidnapping

The attorney for an Idaho Falls man sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping and raping his ex-wife asked the Supreme Court on Friday to grant District Court judges more latitude to correct what they determine may be “profound injustice.”

“We can trust our district judges to apply this standard in a very measured and prudent fashion,” attorney John Radin told the court. “There’s an opportunity here for the criminal justice system to uphold the bedrock foundation of a fair trial.”

But Deputy Attorney General Michael Henderson warned the court that such a decision would contradict previous court precedent and essentially leave the judicial system with no clear standards by which to determine when convicted felons deserve new trials.

The hour-long hearing punctuated by frequent questions from all five justices came on the state’s attempt to reverse the order of 7th District Judge Brent Moss for a new trial for Michael Whiteley, 47, who has been in prison since his 1991 conviction. Under his current sentence, he will be eligible for parole in six more years.

After his conviction, Whiteley began the appeal process under what is called post-conviction relief, and at the core of his petition for a new trial was the claim that new evidence had surfaced in the form of testimony from a former high school principal who saw Whiteley and his ex-wife, Sylvia Canido, during the alleged abduction at the end of their turbulent relationship and they seemed normal.

Henderson argued that the principal’s testimony failed to meet the standards of new evidence because Whiteley knew about it when he was being tried six years ago and just failed to tell his lawyer.

But during last year’s hearing on his petition, Canido refused to answer the same questions about the kidnapping and rape that she answered when testifying against Whiteley during the trial. Radin also brought in other witnesses who contradicted her trial testimony.

Radin contended that Canido’s decision to invoke her 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination was critical new evidence that justified Moss’s ultimate decision to order a new trial.

And even if it fell short of qualifying as new evidence under past court rulings, he argued that it raised enough questions about the fairness of the trial and the truthfulness of Canido’s original testimony that Moss should have the power to order a new trial.

Henderson countered that such leeway allows a judge to ignore the rules and procedures and order a new trial just because “he has a different view of the evidence and is uncomfortable with conviction.”

Prosecutors would be forced to put on their entire case again during post-conviction relief proceedings, he argued, just to make sure the judge is convinced the jury did the right thing the first time.