Kootenai County settles Paradis suit

Kootenai County commissioners have approved a $900,000 settlement with a former death row inmate who spent 20 years in prison before being released because he did not get a fair trial in 1981.

But the settlement does not mean county prosecutors did anything wrong, nor does it mean that Donald Paradis should be considered innocent of crimes, said Kirt Naylor, who represented Kootenai County in the lawsuit.

“This isn’t a case where DNA has come down 20 years later and exonerated and declared the innocence of a previously convicted criminal,” Naylor said Wednesday. “This is a case where, based on a court ruling, he was afforded another opportunity to be tried.”

Paradis was released in April 2001 after it was ruled that in 1981, then-deputy prosecutor Marc Haws withheld personal notes that outlined a discrepancy in the autopsy results of 19-year-old Kimberly Palmer, who was found slain in a creek south of Post Falls with her boyfriend Scott Currier.

Medical examiner William Brady testified during Paradis’ first trial that water from the creek was found in the lungs of Palmer, indicating that she was alive when she was transported from Washington to Idaho and then killed. But Haws’ notes indicated that during the autopsy, Brady had said Palmer was dead when she entered the water.

In 2001, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Paradis to be released or retried, and prosecutors agreed to let Paradis plead guilty to accessory to a felony and admit moving Palmer’s body but not killing her. He was sentenced to five years in prison but given credit for time served, and he was released that April.

“Let me put it this way: No court of law has ever exonerated Mr. Paradis for the murder of Kimberly Palmer,” Naylor said. “No court of law, no jury of his peers has ever found him not guilty or innocent of the crime.”

But that did not stop the county from settling out of court with Paradis, who had a cadre of fairly high-profile lawyers at his disposal for his $20 million lawsuit, which he filed in 2003.

The suit named Kootenai County as a defendant, as well as Haws, Brady, former Prosecutor Glen Walker, former deputy prosecutor Peter Erbland and former Detective George Elliot.

Under the structured settlement, the Idaho Counties Risk Management Program – the county’s insurance provider – agreed to immediately pay Paradis $50,000 and give him monthly payments of $3,541 for 11 years.

He is guaranteed to receive payments for 132 months, but lawyer Dan Sharp said Paradis will receive the payments for life.

“This doesn’t nearly compensate Paradis for what Mark Haws and the other Kootenai County prosecutors did to him,” Sharp said. “But it’s some compensation.”

The case was also difficult because of the protection the government has against such lawsuits, said Elaine Whitfield Sharp, another of Paradis’ lawyers.

“It was a really tough battle, because every day the courts make laws to protect the government from the people,” she said. “It used to be the other way around.”

Attorneys for Paradis will receive about half of the total $900,000 settlement. The Sharps were awarded $200,000 in fees immediately, and attorney Bill Mauk will receive more than $2,800 per month for 10 years.

Part of Paradis’ argument in his lawsuit was that prosecutors, especially Haws, had not been properly trained in trading evidence with a defendant – a fundamental right of the U.S. justice system.

“The government is not allowed to hide evidence that shows you didn’t commit a crime,” Whitfield Sharp said. “They had no training whatsoever in the right of a criminal defendant to get evidence.”

Haws, now a deputy U.S. attorney in Boise, would offer only a single statement on the settlement approved Tuesday: “I am gratified by my dismissal from this lawsuit,” he said. “I was proud and I maintain that my actions were at all times honorable, ethical and diligent. It is good to get this matter completely behind us after 25 years.”