Jury acquits suspect

The Daily Inter Lake

A Flathead County jury Thursday found a Lakeside man innocent of molesting two girls.

The jury deliberated for about three hours before acquitting Ezequiel Bautista on two counts of sexual assault.

Bautista, 36, was charged after the adolescent-age girls accused him of improprieties Aug. 15, 2005.

They said that on that day, he asked them sexual questions, told them a story about two girls raping him, and later, touched the girls through their clothing. They had gone to his house in Kalispell to help him clean it before he moved to Lakeside.

Bautista hired Kalispell attorney Lane Bennett to defend him.

During closing arguments, Bennett listed a number of ways in which the girls' stories differed from one another's, including the conditions of the room when the assault allegedly happened and how the incident took place.

"The details are where this case falls apart," Bennett said.

Bennett also told the jury that the allegations of sexual assault against Bautista didn't meet the statutory language of sexual assault.

Also, "It is inconceivable that a man would molest two young teenage girls at the same time. … The state has miserably failed to prove that," Bennett said.

Lori Adams, deputy county attorney, told the jury not to be confused or distracted by Bennett's arguments.

"Keep your eyes on the ball," she said.

There are cases of people molesting two victims at a time.

"This type of crime is a crime of opportunity," she said.

It is also a crime "that happens in secret," Adams said.

The jury shouldn't be concerned that there were no witnesses to the crimes because there seldom are in these cases, she said.

The three-day trial was held before District Judge Ted Lympus.

The jury was not allowed to hear that Bautista faces another sex charge, unrelated to those in this trial.