Dasen's attorney refiles dismissed motions

Motions for moving the trial outside of Flathead County and completely dismissing charges in the prostitution case of businessman Dick Dasen Sr. were filed again Monday.

Dasen's attorney, George Best, again requested that District Judge Stewart Stadler dismiss the case for lack of speedy trial or move the trial to where a jury could be found that doesn't already have an opinion on the case. Those are among the seven motions that were recycled Monday.

In December, Stadler issued a wholesale denial of the same motions. At the time, he ruled all evidence is admissible and found no reason to move the trial or dismiss charges for lack of speedy trial. He did grant Best's motion to compel prosecutors to provide information about how to reach some witnesses and ordered prosecutors to return to Dasen some items that won't be needed at trial.

Dasen, 62, of Kalispell, is charged with 14 crimes related to prostitution. They include prostitution, promotion of prostitution, aggravated promotion of prostitution, sexual intercourse without consent and sexual abuse of children. Police allege that he has spent millions of dollars on sex in the past 20 years.

Best's motions were filed without supporting briefs to explain their rationale. The deadline for those motions was at Monday morning's omnibus hearing. Best has several days to file the briefs.

He asks that all charges be dropped because Dasen has been denied his constitutional right to a speedy trial. Charges were originally filed in February 2004 and have been modified twice, as recently as Nov. 24. The case was set for trial in August and then in January, when Best asked to have the trial delayed. It was rescheduled for April.

Best also alleges that pretrial publicity has poisoned the pool of potential jurors and "precludes any possibility of a fair and impartial trial."

He also wants to suppress all CDs, statements and transcripts of interviews conducted by police because they are allegedly unintelligible, inaccurate or incomplete.

He wants 10 counts of prostitution dismissed because prosecutors allegedly did not produce evidence to him as requested.

He requests that all "statements or transcripts or evidence" taken from Dasen be suppressed on the grounds that they were obtained by illegal search, unlawful arrest, violation of the Miranda warning or were obtained by coercion.

In another motion, Best says that search warrants served at Dasen's home and two businesses were illegal and that all evidence taken should be suppressed. Finally, he wants police and prosecutors to produce rolls of film, files, interviews with witnesses and copies of the officers' notebooks from the beginning of the case.

Meanwhile, prosecuting Deputy County Attorney Dan Guzynski filed notices to the court Monday that give fair warning of some of the evidence he plans to use.

He plans to establish at trial that Dasen engaged in a common scheme to have sex with women in exchange for money. Much of the evidence has already been discussed, Guzynski pointed out.

In a document filed Monday, he lays out more testimony he plans to introduce.

He will call one woman who will testify that Dasen told her he would give her $1,000 per week, provide her with schooling, a car and a business, as long as she provided him with sex. He also told her that he would pay her if she brought friends who would have sex with Dasen to him. The document lists seven such women she introduced to him.

Another woman will testify that she engaged in sex with Dasen for money and that she brought a woman to meet him so he would pay more money. She will also testify that the woman she introduced to Dasen alleged that he choked her during the sexual encounter.

A third woman will testify that she introduced an acquaintance to Dasen, who said he would pay more to see them together.

Also, Guzynski will introduce at trial a police interview with Dasen in which he allegedly named 11 women he had sex with and was paying money to. Checks will be exhibited for all of the women.

Dasen is not specifically charged with the acts named in the document, but Guzynski said those acts are part of the overall body of evidence in the case.

The trial is expected to last about six weeks.

Reporter Chery Sabol may be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at csabol@dailyinterlake.com