First Malicious Harassment Case Tests County Verbal Exchange In Grocery Store With Hispanic Man Spawned Charge

The case of the state vs. Dodge may not be a popular one in Boundary County, but it’s an important one, according to human rights advocates.

Clint Dodge is charged with malicious harassment, a felony with a maximum punishment of five years in prison or a $5,000 fine, or both. He’s accused of harassing a Hispanic man in a Bonners Ferry grocery store last summer.

When Dodge’s trial began Wednesday, about two dozen potential jurors were excused after 1st District Court Judge James Michaud asked whether they could fairly judge the case. They said they could not.

Another man was excused when he said the malicious harassment law should be put on trial, not Dodge.

The law has been tested, having prevailed in a U.S. Supreme Court challenge. The question now is whether Dodge broke it.

“This case is about one person’s human rights and another person’s hatred,” Deputy Prosecutor Todd Reed said in his opening statement to the jury.

Defense attorney Roger Williams contends the case has more to do with a salt-of-the-earth man’s frustrations with a language barrier.

The charges stem from a July 19 shopping trip. Antonio Ponce, a 42-year-old tree nursery worker, went grocery shopping with his 5-year-old daughter. Upon entering the store, he was approached by Dodge, a 30-year-old landscaper whom he’d met before.

A witness, Carolina Villanueva, said she heard yelling and saw the two men standing somewhere between the candy display and the soda pop cooler. Dodge was waving his fists angrily over his head and yelling, she testified. She also saw Dodge spit at Ponce’s feet.

Ponce testified through an interpreter that Dodge said, “Get out of my face, I don’t like Mexicans.”

Ponce’s daughter hid behind his legs as the two men cussed at each other, according to Ponce’s testimony.

When Reed asked whether Ponce feared for his safety he answered, “Not so much for myself. My daughter was scared.”

Later, Ponce testified that every time he saw Dodge, Dodge seemed angry.

“Every time I see him, I fear. I don’t know what he has against me,” Ponce said.

During his cross-examination of Villanueva, Williams reminded her of her testimony at Dodge’s preliminary hearing last summer, when she told the court that Ponce said he was fine after the confrontation.

“To me, he looked like he was afraid,” she said Wednesday.

Testimony will continue today in the case, which is the first time a malicious harassment case has been prosecuted in Boundary County.

Williams is expected to bring character witnesses to testify on behalf of Dodge, a church-going Bonners Ferry native and former Navy corporal.

The case is “very significant,” said Tony Stewart, a political science professor at North Idaho College and a founding member of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations.

“It sends a message that you cannot do this without being prosecuted,” he said. “Secondly, it’s a great comfort to the minority community that the community will respond to it. And it sends a message beyond the county that, yes, we do care.”

Getting the malicious harassment law passed was one of the first projects of the Kootenai County task force, which formed in 1981. The malicious harassment law passed in 1983. Coeur d’Alene attorney Glen Walker had the state’s first conviction in the early 1980s.