A Half-Truth Is a Whole Lie

A glossy mailer landed in mailboxes across Montana last week, branding Judge Dan Wilson “dangerous”, “a threat to your family.” It was sent from a Missoula post office box, paid for with money raised in a single month, and timed so your ballot would be in your hand before Judge Wilson could answer.

Here is the answer—because a half-truth is a whole lie.

Start with how sentencing actually works. A trial judge does not invent punishments. He weighs the recommendation of the elected County Attorney who prosecutes the case, the findings of court-ordered professional evaluations, the defendant’s criminal history, and the law.

In every case this mailer cites, Judge Wilson followed the recommendations in front of him: the prosecutor’s and the evaluators’. And if an offender later broke the court’s trust, Judge Wilson sent him to prison.

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DRYDEN

The strangulation case. The mailer says Wilson gave a man who strangled his wife no prison time, and that the man offended again. Here is what it leaves out. The defendant had no prior violent conviction. His own wife, the victim, swore an affidavit begging the court to release him, calling him “not a danger to our family, or to me,” “a good man, and an amazing father.”

The elected County Attorney, the prosecutor, not the judge, recommended a suspended sentence. Judge Wilson followed that recommendation. And when the man violated the court’s trust the next year, Judge Wilson put him behind bars, a three-year commitment with not one day suspended.

They told you Wilson set him free. They did not tell you Wilson locked him up.

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BOOTS

The child-pornography case. They put a name on your mailer, Christian Boots, and told you Dan Wilson “let him right back onto our streets.” Here is the name they left off: Amy Eddy.

The Boots case belonged to Judge Amy Eddy from the day it was filed. From June 27, 2016 until Dan Wilson took the bench on January 5, 2017, it was her case and on her watch Boots was released without bail, a release Judge Eddy herself continued that July. Dan Wilson had no say in any of it.

When the case was finally reassigned to Judge Wilson, a court-ordered sex-offender evaluation found Boots had no persistent sexual interest in children, and the treatment provider recommended probation. Judge Wilson imposed it behind a wall of conditions: sex-offender treatment, no contact with minors, no being anywhere minors gather, restricted and monitored internet, no internet-capable phone, and registration as a sex offender. When Boots came back to court twice to ask to loosen those conditions, Judge Wilson told him no both times; the second time, the prosecutor stood against him too. Nine years later, Boots has not reoffended.

So remember this: Amy Eddy, the judge who kept Boots free without bail,
is the candidate all this out-of-state money is working to elect.

Dan Wilson, the judge who locked his conditions down
and kept them down, is the one they call “dangerous.”

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CORLESS

And in another child-pornography case, the prosecutor recommended a sentence that would have made the defendant eligible for parole in about a year: five years in prison, five on probation. Judge Wilson went the other way. He suspended the entire ten-year sentence instead, which meant that when the man later re-offended, the full ten years were still on the table.

Judge Wilson sent him to prison for all ten, where he sits today.
The sentence they would have attacked is the very reason that predator is behind bars.

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So ask the question the mailer hoped you would not.

Who spends $800,000 in a single month through a Missoula post office box,
a quarter of a million of it from the trial lawyers’ own political action committee
to flood your mailbox two weeks before ballots drop?

Consider who these people are. Trial lawyers are officers of the court; the truth is their stock in trade. They put witnesses on the stand and make them swear to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” because they, of all people, know that a half-truth is a whole lie.

So why won’t they tell you the whole truth about Dan Wilson? Because they want a seat on the Supreme Court filled by one of their own, and they have one. Amy Eddy once served as president of this very Montana Trial Lawyers Association.

Amy Eddy is also the judge who kept Christian Boots free without bail, back when the case was hers and before it was ever Dan Wilson’s. Now the trial lawyers’ PAC spends a quarter of a million dollars to hang her own case around Dan Wilson’s neck. One word from Amy Eddy could stop these half-truths about a fellow judge. Instead, her silence is golden, or at least worth a quarter of a million dollars. These were real crimes, with real victims. They deserve better than to be turned into props in an attack ad by people who will not even tell you who paid for it.

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Judge Dan Wilson followed the law, the prosecutors, and the evidence.
He jailed the men who broke his trust.
That is not dangerous.
That is a judge doing his job.

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Vote for the man who tells the whole truth, Dan Wilson
Montana Supreme Court, Seat 4. Ballots mail October 9.

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Sources:

Facts drawn from Montana district court records in Flathead County, the Flathead Beacon (June 12, 2017), Department of Corrections con web search engine, and campaign-finance filings in Montana’s Campaign Electronic Reporting System (CERS).

Franz, J. (2017, June 12). Kalispell man given suspended sentence for possessing child porn. Flathead Beacon. https://flatheadbeacon.com/2017/06/12/kalispell-man-given-suspended-sentence-possessing-child-porn/