Man twice a rape suspect back in court on probation violation
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
A Missoula man convicted of felony sexual assault in September but who a judge spared from serving hard time now stands accused of violating his probation by driving drunk, and faces up to 100 years in prison.
Daniel G. Tudahl was arrested Jan. 12 in Bozeman on his third DUI charge, but denied the probation violation during a hearing in Missoula District Court on Tuesday.
The sex assault case dates back to July 2005, when Tudahl was arrested for allegedly raping a woman after she had fallen asleep at a party in the Blue Mountain area. A second rape case emerged eight months later, when another woman told detectives Tudahl had assaulted her in December 2004 under similar circumstances.
He disputed both rape cases and eventually pleaded no contest to a lesser offense of sexual assault, accepting a plea agreement after two mistrials failed to absolve him of the 2005 case. The plea bargain folded both cases into one, charged as a continuing course of conduct that covered both victims, and Fourth Judicial District Judge Doug Harkin gave Tudahl a four-year deferred sentence. The judge credited him with a year of time served both in jail and on pre-trial supervision.
A deferred imposition of sentence means the felony charge is stricken from Tudahl’s record if he stays out of trouble until 2012; if he violates any of the conditions, however, Harkin can throw the book at him.
According to Deputy Missoula County Attorney Suzy Boylan, Tudahl violated a term of his probation when Bozeman police jailed him on a DUI charge. His blood alcohol concentration was .177, according to a report from probation officer Michelle Puerner, more than two times the legal limit of .08.
“He was well aware of the opportunity he was being afforded by the court,” Puerner wrote in a petition to revoke Tudahl’s deferred sentence. Puerner also makes note of the fact that Tudahl had only been on supervision for four months at the time of his DUI arrest.
“During this time he has completely disregarded the conditions set forth by the court,” she wrote.
In her report, Puerner recommended that Tudahl be re-sentenced to the Department of Corrections for 10 years, with eight years suspended. Puerner also recommended that he be screened for the DOC’s Intensive Supervision Program and be required to register with Montana’s sex offender database.
Even though Tudahl was convicted of a sex offense, he was not forced to register as a sexual offender at his sentencing in September. That’s because of a recently amended and little-known Montana law that eliminates the registration requirement from sexual assault cases, except in cases where the victim is a minor. At sentencing, Judge Harkin called the 2007 statute “dumb,” and emphasized the need for defendants like Tudahl to sign up with the registry.
Tudahl has no previous felony charges, but he has three misdemeanor convictions for indecent exposure and another for surreptitious visual observation, or being a “peeping tom,” according to Puerner’s report. His Jan. 12 arrest also marked his third DUI charge, and he had two violations for alcohol use while on pre-trial supervision, according to Puerner’s report.
Puerner noted that both victims in the sex assault case were assaulted while Tudahl was under the influence of alcohol, and pointed to a psycho-sexual evaluation in which Tudahl admits that he “definitely” has a problem with alcohol.
“The defendant’s continued behavior and his past criminal history demonstrates to this officer that he is a risk to the community and the community needs to have the ability to access information about his sexual offending behavior,” Puerner wrote.
Harkin scheduled a status conference in the petition to revoke case for Feb. 16.
[...] write stories about judges handing out “deferred” and “suspended” sentences (see this recent blog post for an example), and I sometimes wonder whether readers are familiar enough with the terms to understand exactly [...]