Robber free to move south - 25 years later

For almost 25 years, Acrel Hinson has stayed out of trouble. Thursday, he waited in court to find out if he would have to start over on serving a criminal sentence he said he thought he'd satisfied long ago.

He won't.

Hinson, 55, was convicted in 1980 of armed robbery in Columbia Falls. He served a brief prison term and then was released on probation for the remainder of his 25-year sentence.

Just months shy of being released from probation, he was picked up near Helena last summer on a warrant for violating probation.

"I was just devastated. The night I was arrested, I had no idea" there was a warrant for his arrest, he said.

He said after he was released from prison, he moved to Missouri and then moved to California, with his probation officer's permission. He went to Alabama and returned to California. And then he went missing.

Hinson testified that in 1986, he had called his Montana probation officer who said, "He didn't care where I went as long as I stayed out of Montana," Hinson testified.

And so Hinson went to Pennsylvania and to the South, where he worked primarily at race tracks.

There is some dispute about whether a probation officer told Hinson that he had discharged his sentence or whether Hinson knew there was a warrant for his arrest. The probation officer no longer works here.

But since the robbery, Hinson has committed no serious crimes.

Under questioning by his lawyer, Bob Allison, Hinson said his only criminal trouble was in Fargo, N.D. about three years ago. He was charged with filing a false police report after turning in a woman for theft, but deciding later not to testify against her.

Hinson told Allison he had no idea he was wanted in Montana for violating probation. He'd been stopped through the years on routine traffic-patrol stops, where officers ran his driver's license and license plates through the national crime information center.

"Not once did a warrant ever come through NCIC on me," he said.

If Flathead District Judge Stewart Stadler found that Hinson violated probation, it could mean being sentenced again for the original robbery.

Stadler, though, found that Hinson "did not violate the rules as told to you" by the former probation officer.

That leaves Hinson free to go where he wants.

His plans?

"The cold weather's getting a little too hard on these old bones," Hinson said.

He plans to return to the South.