Sex offender asks Supreme Court to withdraw plea

A Flathead County felon has asked the Montana Supreme Court to let him withdraw his 2012 Alford plea to felony failure to register as a sex offender.

Brian Virgil Nauman, 55, filed an appeal to the high court on Monday, asking that he be allowed to withdraw his plea.

“The plea was not knowing, voluntary, or intelligent, and the subsequent breach of the plea agreement gave Nauman the prerogative to withdraw his plea,” Nauman’s attorney Nick K. Brooke wrote in the appeal. “This court should reverse and remand so that Nauman may withdraw his plea and seek a jury trial.”

The high court already reversed Flathead District Court Judge Robert Allison’s earlier decision to go beyond the scope of a 2012 plea agreement in which Nauman agreed to enter an Alford plea in exchange for a recommendation for a three-year suspended sentence with the Montana Department of Corrections.

An Alford plea admits that someone is likely to be found guilty at trial, but does not admit explicit guilt and allows a defendant to maintain his or her innocence.

The failure-to-register conviction resulted after Nauman was released from a 10-year sentence to Montana State Prison imposed in 2001 for molesting a 12-year-old girl.

He registered a Kalispell apartment as his address in 2011 but a probation officer found that Nauman was living at another property outside town. Nauman fled and hid in a wheat field when the probation officer investigated. The officer found that Nauman had a Facebook account and cellphones in violation of his terms of probation. The devices contained evidence of inappropriate contact with young girls.

The high court found that while Allison was right to find Nauman had violated his probation for the social media conduct, the judge went beyond the scope of the law when he decided not to follow the plea agreement. He sentenced Nauman to three years in the Montana State Prison, all suspended, for the new failure-to-register case.

Once the case was sent back to District Court, Allison followed the recommendation and sentenced Nauman in accordance with the plea agreement to three years suspended with the Montana Department with Corrections.

However, Nauman argues he should be able to withdraw his plea altogether.

Nauman moved to withdraw his plea in November 2014, one week after the Montana Supreme Court reversed Allison’s original sentencing. Allison ruled against the motion to withdraw.

“Even if this court assumed that the MSP sentence was a simple mistake, Nauman was entitled to void his end of the agreement,” Brooke wrote.

Nauman is housed at the Dawson County Correctional Facility in Glendive.

Reporter Megan Strickland can be reached at 758-4459 or mstrickland@dailyinterlake.com.