State supreme court rejects convicted murderer's request for new trial

The Montana Supreme Court rejected an attempt by convicted murderer Cecil Rice to win a new trial last week.

Rice, who earned 70 years behind bars after a jury found him guilty of the 2017 murder of Anthony Andrew Walthers in Evergreen, had previously appealed his conviction to the state’s high court, claiming ineffective counsel. Justices affirmed the conviction in 2020.

In 2021, Rice sought relief once more, this time asking Flathead County District Court for a new trial. According to court documents, Rice based his request on nine grounds of ineffective counsel, including that his attorney should have sought a new venue for the original trial given the media attention around the killing.

The argument made little headway in district court, which dismissed his petition with prejudice in May 2021. The decision came after the district court concluded that “each of Rice’s alleged errors by trial counsel were not supported by the record, were not in fact errors, or were not the sort of decisions that could rise to ineffective assistance of counsel,” wrote Chief Justice Mike McGrath in an opinion on behalf of the state supreme court released April 5.

In his appeal of that decision to the supreme court, Rice focused solely on concerns of a biased jury, McGrath wrote.

THE SHOCKING killing drew headlines across the state in 2017. After Walthers allegedly made rude comments about Rice’s girlfriend, Rice shoved him from the Old Steel Bridge to his death in the Flathead River.

While passersby rushed to try and pull Walthers from the water, Rice fled the scene with his then girlfriend and another man. Authorities eventually recovered Walthers’ body from Flathead Lake, about a mile and a half from the mouth of the Flathead River.

Walthers’ death was deemed drowning by homicide.

A district court judge sentenced Rice to seven decades in the Montana State Prison, in January 2018.

Rice maintained his innocence.

Appealing last year’s district court dismissal of his petition, Rice changed his argument from one of venue to whether his attorney should have challenged jurors owing to their knowing about the case. Additionally, one juror previously served on a volunteer board with a member of the prosecution team. Another was friends with the prosecutor’s parents. Rice argued that his attorney should have moved to strike both jurors for cause.

But because Rice failed to make that same argument in district court, the supreme court opted to dismiss his petition.

“This is the first time Rice has raised this argument; he did not raise it in his 2019 direct appeal or in the post-conviction petition he now appeals from the district court,” McGrath wrote. “This court will not review issues raised for the first time on appeal.”

Further, the supreme court opted against addressing any of the issues Rice brought up in his original petition in district court, McGrath wrote.

“Here, by focusing solely on a novel theory never argued below, Rice has abandoned the numerous other ineffective assistance grounds that he raised before the district court,” McGrath wrote. “Rice’s appeal here presents no basis for this court to overturn the district court’s analysis and dismissal of his petition for post-conviction relief.”

Rice represented himself in the petition.

News Editor Derrick Perkins can be reached at 758-4430 or dperkins@dailyinterlake.com.