Convicted murderer back in jail 2 days after release
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POLSON — Clifford Oldhorn is back in Lake County Jail after Sanders County law enforcement found him drinking in Dixon just two days after his release. District Judge C.B. McNeil set Oldhorn free on his own recognizance Feb. 13 pending a new trial in the Harold W. Mitchell Jr. murder case, but Oldhorn was still required to abide by probation rules for three 2005 convictions for burglary, theft and deceptive practices.
According to Flathead Police Chief Craige Couture, it only took the 26-year-old Oldhorn 48 hours out of jail to violate at least one condition of his probation: that he not consume alcohol or go to bars. As Oldhorn was on probation in Lake County, Flathead Police transferred him to the Lake County Jail on Saturday.
Justice of the Peace Joey Jayne set his bond at $30,000, and Oldhorn remained in custody Tuesday afternoon, according to Capt. Luc Mathias with the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.
In 2008, Oldhorn sent a letter from prison in Great Falls, where he was incarcerated on unrelated charges, to then Lake County Undersheriff Jay Doyle. Oldhorn wrote that he had been a witness to the murder of Mitchell, a 73-year-old St. Ignatius resident and former Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Chairman. Oldhorn maintains that when he wrote to Doyle, and later confessed his part in the killing and named three others who were involved, he believed he would be granted immunity from prosecution. Instead, all four men were charged in connection with the murder, and in August 2011, Oldhorn became the only one convicted. He was sentenced to 100 years in Montana State Prison for deliberate homicide, while charges on the other three men — Nigel Ernst, Nathan Ross and Kyle Brown — were dismissed, since prosecution of each depended largely on Oldhorn’s confession and he was no longer cooperating.
Oldhorn appealed his conviction to the Montana Supreme Court, which handed the case back to Lake County District Court in November 2012 to make findings on whether or not Oldhorn’s statements to police were voluntary. District Court found in Oldhorn’s favor and ordered that his conviction be vacated and he receive a new trial; the state responded with an appeal to the Supreme Court, and the appeal is pending.
Until the Supreme Court rules on the state’s appeal, a new trial can’t be set. Meanwhile, McNeil threw out the prosecution’s request that Oldhorn’s bond be re-set at $500,000, instead letting him live with his aunt in St. Ignatius with the understanding that if he fails to appear in court when ordered, he would be subject to bail-jumping charges. Oldhorn remains on probation for convictions of burglary, theft and deceptive practices from 2005.
In his argument as to why Oldhorn still should be held on a $500,000 bond, Lake County Attorney Mitch Young wrote that not only is Oldhorn charged with the most serious offense in the Montana penal code — deliberate homicide — but he is a flight risk and is a danger to the community, especially individuals who testified for the prosecution during the original murder trial. Young also presented the court with a copy of Oldhorn’s disciplinary log from the Montana State Prison, three pages of offenses dating back to July 2006 and ranging from gang-related activity, drug use and destruction of facilities to fighting and refusing orders from prison guards.
According to charging documents, Oldhorn and three others planned to rob Mitchell because they had heard he had a stash of cash in his home, a trailer house in the St. Ignatius area. By the time firefighters got a call reporting a mobile home fire, the 73-year-old Mitchell had been beaten, his neck slashed and his body doused with gasoline and burned.
Mitchell’s body was sent to the state crime lab in Missoula, where an autopsy determined that he died of a knife wound to the neck before the fire started. The investigation also showed that gasoline was used as an accelerant in the fire, and Mitchell’s death was ruled a homicide.
