Dasen trial has tested entire community
The jury spoke, and now it's almost over.
More than a year after Dick Dasen Sr. was arrested for sex crimes, a jury processed a month's worth of testimony and evidence and came to a verdict. Guilty on six counts. Innocent on seven.
We can all take a big breath.
It was an especially oppressive trial atmosphere. Police and prosecutors ran themselves ragged on the case. The defense side had a lot at stake. The sense of intensity was much deeper than the industrial-grade carpet inside the courtroom, where the dark side of many people's personal lives was revealed.
The men and women on the jury didn't have the opportunity to avert their eyes. It was their duty, and their burden, to take it all in. They were the chosen ones to hear and see the kinds of things that newspapers have to censor and spectators shake their heads at.
News coverage of the trial annoyed some people. Some readers complained that there must be SOMETHING besides the trial to put on the front page. There was, and for the first 18 days of the month, 12 were without trial coverage on the front page.
The truth is, the Dasen trial was an undeniably big news event. Like the six degrees of separation to Kevin Bacon, it seems that almost everyone knows someone who knows someone directly involved in the longest trial in Flathead history. The topic became small talk, passed between acquaintances at the grocery store, at a bar, at lunch.
When it was all over, a couple of things were clear.
One is the reminder that jurors deserve our gratitude. Whatever we think about the verdict, it was rendered fairly and respectfully. Jurors found evidence to convict Dasen on some charges. There wasn't enough evidence to convict on others, they decided. They didn't turn a roster of 13 charges into a meaningless checklist. After they were done, one juror said, "I can go to bed tonight and sleep." We hope all 12 jurors are sleeping well. They made the system work.
Another thing that's clear is that we don't envy District Judge Stewart Stadler. In July, he'll hear testimony and opinions on what kind of sentence Dasen deserves. Dasen faces up to 126 years in prison. Stadler will consider factors such as Dasen's criminal history or lack thereof, evaluations on what kind of risk he poses to the community, the contributions he has made to the valley in civic activities, and the impact his crimes had on victims and others.
Stadler's daunting decision is almost guaranteed to anger some people, no matter what he decides. There is a lot of emotion that envelopes the Dasen case, beginning the day of his arrest when some people thought he was being persecuted and others insisted the millionaire's money had protected him from harm.
That day seems like a long time ago. So many people have told so many stories since the Dasen case surfaced. There may be some powerful parables there to examine. For now, it's a relief to just have the trial behind us.