Dasen loses final appeal to top court

Former businessman had argued search was illegal

Former Kalispell businessman Richard Dasen Sr., imprisoned since September 2005 on prostitution and other sex-crime convictions, lost his final appeal to the Montana Supreme Court.

Justice William Leaphart delivered the court's decision Tuesday.

The high court ruled that Kalispell police properly carried out its search of Dasen's home and businesses in which they seized, among other things, computers containing information used to make the case against him.

The court also considered Dasen's challenges to three procedural matters - jury instructions, felony designations for some of the prostitution counts and "mistake of age" defense. The justices upheld none of those challenges.

Dasen was accused of spending millions of dollars on sex with women, mostly methamphetamine addicts. About 20 of them had been convicted of prostitution by the time Dasen was sentenced.

He was arrested Feb. 24, 2005, after former Kalispell policeman Kevin McCarvel's drug investigations kept leading to Dasen's name as a funding source. Eventually, police arrested Dasen at a Kalispell motel, where they taped an encounter between him and a woman who said he often paid her for sex.

After an 18-day trial and more than 10 hours of deliberation, a jury convicted him on one misdemeanor and five felony sex charges in May 2005.

In September 2005, District Judge Stewart Stadler sentenced Dasen to two years without parole in Montana State Prison on one of the felony prostitution counts, plus 18 years suspended for the remaining counts.

His prison time was reduced by the 120 days he had been in jail by the time he was sentenced.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court denied Dasen's contention that evidence against him came from illegal searches and should not have been allowed in court.

In February 2004, police searched Dasen's home and two businesses in which he had an interest, Budget Finance and Peak Development. The applications for the search warrants listed items to be seized, but the warrants did not - and the applications did not accompany the warrants presented when searches were done.

Dasen's lawyers cited a U.S. Supreme Court decision handed down two weeks later saying that was illegal. On March 2, 2004, all the items were returned.

Police submitted new warrant applications to District Judge Kitty Curtis, who then approved a second search warrant that listed specific items to be seized. Stadler had asked that any new applications be submitted to a different judge "to insure and guarantee an independent review."

The items were returned and re-seized.

Dasen argued, according to Tuesday's ruling, that the second warrant was invalid "because it was the fruit of the poisonous tree - that is, it was a product of the first, invalid search."

Dasen also said Curtis had no jurisdiction because he earlier had sought, successfully, for her to be replaced by a different judge.

And he contended the second search warrant could not be independent from the first "because the taint of the first search could not be 'purged,'" according to Tuesday's ruling.

He also cited a federal case that said once police have held evidence, it is hard to prove new information contained in a second search-warrant application did not come from that seized evidence.

The Supreme Court found, however, that police used all the same information in the first application as it did in the second. Police also had new information, but it was gained from a victim's grandmother and from a wire transfer they knew about before the first search, the court found.

It was enough to wipe out both the "fruit of the poisonous tree" and "inability to purge the taint" arguments.

The justices also said Curtis did have jurisdiction. The state Supreme Court case that Dasen had cited was misapplied, the court said, because a search warrant is different from a "finding" or an "order" as referred to in that case.

They also ruled that "Judge Curtis issued the second search warrant with the authority of acting Judge Stadler."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com