County dismisses 3-year criminal case based in neighbor dispute
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POLSON — If good fences made good neighbors, life on one lakeside lane off Highway 35 would be much more peaceful than history reveals. Over the past five years, a drama pitting next-door neighbors against each other has tainted life for four residents of Station Creek Way. The drama has involved civil suits for millions of dollars and led to criminal charges against one party, and last week, emotions escalated for everyone involved as one chapter of the story came to an end.
It’s been nearly three years since the Lake County Sheriff’s Office seized computers, camera equipment, computer discs, printed photographs and contact sheets from photographer David Spear’s home in April 2008 after his neighbor accused Spear of trespassing and taking inappropriate pictures of the neighbor and his wife. Five months after the search of Spear and his wife Jill Erickson’s home, Spear was charged with one count of stalking and two counts of criminal trespassing, all misdemeanors. And after nearly three years of the county or Spear’s former lawyer continuing the trial each time the court date neared, the case was finally set for trial last week in Lake County Justice Court.
But just hours before the scheduled trial at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 2, the county dismissed Spear’s case “on the grounds that while probable cause existed to charge the offense, insufficient evidence exists at this time to sustain the state’s burden of proof at trial,” Deputy County Attorney Cory Allen wrote on the motion to dismiss.
To a prosecutor, the next six words are astounding: “The defendant objects to this motion.”
At the request of Spear and his lawyer, Craig Shannon, Allen added that sentence to the record, something he’d never been asked to do before, he said. The case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it can never be re-filed, Allen explained.
“It’s gone forever, and that’s why it was unusual for (Spear) to object to it,” he said.
Why would a defendant charged with stalking and trespassing object to the prosecutor dropping the case against him? Spear and Shannon believed their case was so strong that presenting the evidence in court would only vindicate Spear.
“We were ready to go (to trial),” Shannon said.
“I feel as good as I can going into a trial being wrongly charged and being built on lies,” Spear said just days before the scheduled trial date. “I really want the county to make their case against me.”
Allen said his reasoning for dismissing the case was threefold: a lack of quality evidence; the fact that the case had been going on for three years with no new problems between Spear and the Zuazuas; and “It seems like this is really a neighbor dispute … and that is a problem, in this case, better addressed in civil court,” he explained.
After Wednesday’s change of plans, Spear said not getting a chance to defend himself against the charges publicly was disappointing. His lawyer agreed, but said the prosecutor made the right decision.
“(Allen) didn’t believe the evidence,” Shannon said. “I applaud him for dismissing the case.”
The neighbors who brought charges against Spear feel just the opposite.
“All this is baloney,” Amador Zuazua said Thursday evening, pointing to a Montana Code Annotated statute on trespassing displayed on his computer screen. “(These laws) are not being applied.”
Amador, a retired mechanical engineer, and his wife Martha moved from Hayden Lake, Idaho, to Flathead Lake’s East Shore in the summer of 2004. According to Amador, the modest lakeshore home they purchased from Charles Everts was on the market only a few hours before the Zuazuas found what they consider their piece of paradise.
“We dreamed about this place for years,” Martha said.
It wasn’t long before their dream turned into a nightmare, the Zuazuas say.
“When we acquired the property, we started encountering problems,” Amador said.
Those problems included a lack of privacy — Spear would come onto the Zuazuas property unannounced, Amador said — being “insulted” by Spear and Erickson and even having their mail stolen, the Zuazuas contend. It’s unclear exactly when issues first arose between the neighbors, but in summer 2006, the Zuazuas erected a 10-foot tall gray privacy fence on the line between their property and Spear and Erickson’s.
As matters escalated, the Zuazuas sued Spear and Erickson in the fall of 2007 over a dispute about an easement through the Spear/Erickson property. The easement crosses through several neighbors’ properties, lastly Spear and Erickson’s, and provides the only access to the Zuazuas’ property. The Zuazuas argued that the easement is supposed to be 18 feet wide, and that Spear and Erickson interfered with the Zuazuas’ use of the easement by placing boulders along the road, effectively narrowing it to 8 or 9 feet in width. Later, in the spring of 2008, Spear and Erickson responded with a countersuit denying the Zuazuas’ claims that their use of the easement was infringed upon and alleging that the Zuazuas’ erected their privacy fence out of spite.
Meanwhile, the Zuazuas, Everts, who still owns a summer home on Station Creek Way, and Spear filed complaints about each other with the Lake County Sheriff’s Office. The Zuazuas alleged that Erickson had stolen some financial statements from their mail and that they had seen Spear trespassing, taking pictures on their property and following Martha; Spear said Amador threatened him with obscene language, threw a mock punch at him and asked him if he wanted a war; and Everts claimed to have seen Spear trespassing on his property via a video surveillance system accessible through the Internet from Everts’ office in Arizona — allegations vehemently denied by each accused party.
Then one spring morning, things took a turn toward the incredible for Spear and Erickson.
Four Lake County Sheriff’s deputies and a Polson Police officer showed up around 9 a.m. at Spear’s home, about half an hour after his wife left for an out-of-town trip. Spear recognized the first deputy, and opened the door with his hand extended in greeting.
“He said, ‘Stand where you are,’” Spear remembered. “He said, ‘We’re here to search your house.”
A search warrant signed April 3, 2008, by Justice of the Peace Chuck Wall authorized LCSO Det. Mike Gehl to search Spear’s home, photograph the house and seize evidence relating to the alleged crimes of stalking and trespassing. After a two-and-a-half hour search, deputies left with two computers; camera equipment including two digital cameras, one of which was on loan to Spear from Salish Kootenai College, and a film camera; computer discs; printed photographs including work from Spear’s students and family photos; contact sheets; videos from Spear’s security cameras; and the security camera system itself. Spear said on the day of the search, Gehl told him the items would be returned within 10 days to two weeks. As it turns out, they remained in the LCSO evidence collection until the afternoon of Feb. 2, 2011, after the case had been dismissed — per normal procedure, according to Gehl.
“Evidence is not going to be returned while the case is being investigated,” he said.
At the time he executed the search, Gehl said although he knew there was a history of strife between the Zuazuas and Spear, he wasn’t aware a civil case involving the neighbors had already been filed. Even so, “criminal supersedes civil,” he said.
In interviewing the Zuazuas, Gehl had learned that Spear “was constantly out there taking photos and videos of them,” and Amador had shown him photographs of Spear on the Zuazuas’ property, Gehl said.
“This was a little bit more of a situation,” than people just complaining about their neighbors, Gehl said. “There were some extenuating circumstances.”
But according to Allen, “It’s not unusual for probable cause (for a search) to be established based on nothing more than someone’s word.”
In her affidavit in the criminal case against Spear, Deputy County Attorney Jessica Cole-Hodgkinson noted that there was a long history of discord between the Zuazuas and Spear and Erickson. She cited an encounter between Spear and Martha around Jan. 28, 2008, as the basis for one count of trespassing against Spear. On that afternoon, Martha “was working well within the boundaries of her own property,” when she saw Spear also “well within the boundaries of her property,” Cole-Hodgkinson wrote.
And in the search of Spear’s home, investigators “seized hundreds of digital photographs,” she continued. “Though the defendant is a photographer, a disproportionate number of these photographs depicted either the Zuazua property or Martha Zuazua or both.”
Evidence of Spear stalking Martha included “hundreds of photographs of the Zuazuas and their property” and “hundreds of hours of video surveillance that featured a disproportionate interest in the Zuazuas and their property,” Cole-Hodgkinson wrote.
