Story From Capjournal.com---Pierre, SD---lots of comments on this thus far
Sentences issued in Dahl cases
By David Montgomery
Capital Journal staff
Published/Last Modified on Thursday, May 27, 2010 - 12:46:02 am CDT
FORT PIERRE — Wendy Halweg won't forget the night of July 4, 2009, when her horse was seriously injured after a Fort Pierre man rode off on its back.
Now that Fort Pierre man won't soon forget July 4, either.
Flint Dahl, 23, will spend the next three Fourth of July holidays in jail as part of a creative sentence handed down by Magistrate Judge Mark Smith.
"You're going to serve five days in jail consecutively starting at 9 o'clock in the morning on the Fourth of July 2010, 2011 and 2012," Smith said. "You'll remember why you're there."
Dahl was sentenced Wednesday after pleading guilty to four misdemeanors in a plea agreement with prosecutor Tom P. Maher.
As part of the deal Maher dropped a felony grand theft charge and six other misdemeanors.
In total, Dahl was sentenced to 570 days in jail. He received credit for 28 days he spent behind bars after violating his bond agreement in November and 32 days he spent receiving inpatient alcohol treatment in Yankton.
In addition to the 15 days in jail he will serve over the next three years, Dahl has 495 days in jail suspended. If he breaks the law during the next three years — when he'll be on unsupervised probation — Smith said he wouldn't hesitate to toss him back behind bars.
He also agreed to pay $25,000 restitution to Halweg. In return, Halweg agreed not to sue Dahl for damages to the horse.
Dahl's attorney Patrick Duffy said Dahl had handed over the restitution money and Halweg would have access to it Monday.
Dahl will continue to take twice-daily blood alcohol level tests until Aug. 25 and has to complete his alcohol treatment. He also has to complete 100 hours of community service by Nov. 24.
The charges arose from four separate cases, the most serious being the Fourth of July rodeo horse incident. Dahl pled guilty to inhumane treatment of an animal in that case and avoided the grand theft charge.
For an Aug. 2009 confrontation with a sheriff's deputy, Dahl pled guilty to disorderly conduct, a Class 2 misdemeanor. Dropped were charges of threatening and obstructing a law enforcement officer.
From a Sept. 2009 hit-and-run accident, Dahl pled guilty to reckless driving, a Class 1 misdemeanor. He avoided charges of hit-and-run property damage and failure to report an accident.
Dahl also admitted to ingesting marijuana, a Class 1 misdemeanor, stemming from a drug test taken after a Nov. 2009 traffic stop. Maher dropped charges from the same incident of driving a commercial vehicle under the influence and lacking a commercial driver's license.
Maher, Duffy and Halweg all said they are satisfied with Smith's sentence.
"I know if it was me or my children, if I had to give up a week for the next three years on the Fourth of July week, it would give me cause to think about why am I here and what did I do," Maher said. "Within the sentence that was something I thought was tailor-designed for this case."
Duffy urged Smith to give Dahl a suspended sentence, which would leave open the possibility of Dahl's record being expunged in the future. Dahl, Duffy argued, had already been heavily punished in the court of public opinion.
"I can think of few people that I know who have been more terribly and recklessly savaged in the press than my client Flint Dahl," Duffy said. "No matter what we do here today, in 20 years, somebody's going to be able to tap into (Google) and read everything every crazy cowboy who didn't know what he was talking about had to say about this."
Smith rejected that request, saying justice required a stiffer sentence.
When talking about the horse incident, Dahl and Duffy defended Dahl's conduct.
"As far as I know I didn't inhumanely treat an animal. I just didn't tie it up properly," Dahl told Smith.
Duffy said he believes Dahl could have beaten the charges related to the horse incident if the case had gone to trial, but admitted to the inhumane treatment charge simply to avoid the chance of being convicted of a felony.
Maher argued Dahl's crime was not so much tying up a horse poorly but continuing to ride it after it was injured.
"Here's an animal that's obviously injured — he continued to ride it," Maher said.
Halweg's horse, named Dually, suffered significant injuries in the incident and is still lame in its left-front leg, Halweg said.
"Flint, I want you to understand what this has done to us (Dually and I) physically and emotionally," Halweg wrote in a statement Assistant Attorney General Bridget Mayer read to the court. "You've destroyed what has taken us years to build. Dually and I are teammates, and will continue to be, but you've taken us from competitors to patient and caregiver."
The $25,000 in restitution won't cover all her costs as a result of the incident, Halweg said.
"It'll cover some bills, is what it will do," she said.
Maher said the Dually incident inspired more public passion than any case he's dealt with.
"I heard and I saw those comments about how what one person does would somehow be reflected on the whole community — the sense that Fort Pierre's not safe," Maher said. "Frankly every community has risks. Every community has some bad apples. I thought it was just a bunch of nonsense. Things had gotten really just quite out of hand and taken probably to an exaggerated degree because an animal had been hurt."
But Maher said he understands the passion.
"What do you have invested in a child? It's probably not much different than that, in terms of everyday training on this horse," he said. "That was unique and something that certainly made it different than, say, a vehicle that had been taken and gone on a joyride and run into a post or something."
Dahl, Duffy and Dahl's second attorney, Bernard Duffy, argued his spate of four criminal incidents in a four-month period were due to an alcohol problem that is now under control.
"I know what I did was wrong," Dahl said. "It was all alcohol involved, all the trouble I got in. I've been sober since the day Officer (Mike) Rothschadl arrested me and sent me to jail (in November)."
"(Dahl) pursued me and insisted that he be sent somewhere for treatment," Bernard Duffy said. "I just don't think, your honor, that you're ever going to see Flint back in the courtroom again."
Maher and Halweg both said they hope Dahl's sentence deters future crime.
"We want to put the word out," Maher said. "If it is fairly well known that it's a wine-drinking crazy day Fourth of July in Fort Pierre, that's not okay. Maybe there should be some amount of deterrence for anyone who would think that it would be okay to do any sort of (criminal) behavior."
But Maher said it's too early to say if the sentence will keep Dahl on the straight and narrow.
"Whether this will be enough to correct Flint so he can stay out of the court system, only time will tell that," Maher said.
I also know the Dahls...Flint has been trouble all along. :twisted:
My family still does much business in Pierre....closest big town I guess 
