Tangled trial heads to court next week

By CHERY SABOL

The Daily Inter Lake

Before Joseph Aceto is retried next week on attempted murder and kidnapping charges, some legal items have to be resolved.

Aceto, 52, is accused of - and once was convicted for - attempting to kill his former girlfriend, Eileen Holmquist, and her friend, Rocky Hoerner, in Columbia Falls in 2000. He also was convicted of kidnapping Holmquist.

He was sentenced to 210 years in prison.

The Supreme Court overturned Aceto's January 2002 convictions and ordered in November 2002 that the case be retried.

Since then, four scheduled trial dates have come and gone.

In December 2005, prosecuting Flathead County Attorney Ed Corrigan amended the charges against Aceto. Corrigan added two felony counts of assault with a weapon and asked that Aceto, with a lengthy criminal history, be designated a persistent felony offender. Corrigan also asked for a sentencing enhancement of 10 years for the use of a firearm during the crimes.

District Judge Kitty Curtis dismissed the persistent felony offender designation for not being filed in time.

Now, Curtis has more decisions to make.

Aceto's court-appointed attorney, Glen Neier, has asked that that the assault charges and sentence enhancement be dismissed.

It's been six years since Aceto was first charged, Neier wrote in a brief. Additional charges now amount to prosecutor vindictiveness, he said.

"Empirical evidence of prosecutor vindictiveness is an elusive prey," Neier wrote. "However, when the state has attempted to extract the maximum amount of punishment through illegal means, allowing the case to proceed with additional counts would be to deny the defendant of his rights to due process and equal protection."

Corrigan responded that the charges should be changed because the circumstances of the trial changed when Holmquist killed herself six months after Aceto was convicted.

Her suicide presented a dilemma for the court that was compounded by the Supreme Court ruling based on Aceto's ejection from the courtroom.

Aceto, who represented himself at the first trial, was cross-examining Holmquist when he became angry and argued with Lympus, finally swearing and throwing a file toward Lympus and Holmquist. That resulted in Lympus ordering Aceto removed from the courtroom. Aceto watched the rest of his trial on closed-circuit television from his jail cell.

That was the basis for the Supreme Court's ruling. Although Lympus maintains his action was necessary to protect the integrity of the court, the Supreme Court decided it violated Aceto's constitutional right to participate in his trial.

Aceto was not able to finish questioning Holmquist himself.

And her death means that jurors will have only the transcripts of her testimony from the first trial. Neier had asked to have them excluded, but Curtis said they could be considered.

The transcripts and other testimony will be the basis of the new charges of assault with a weapon unless Curtis grants Neier's motion to dismiss them.

The story jurors will hear, beginning Monday, is that Aceto allegedly kidnapped Holmquist and shot at her and Hoerner at Hoerner's art gallery in Columbia Falls in May 2000. Neither was hit by bullets as they fled.

Aceto allegedly forced Holmquist into his car and made her drive 18 miles up the North Fork Road, where he kept her prisoner for two days in the woods. Police officers and the county SWAT team began a manhunt.

At Aceto's first trial, then-County Attorney Tom Esch said that Aceto eventually told Holmquist he loved her, told her to lie down and count to 100, and left. She was found by officers and Aceto was later arrested.

Aceto denies the charges against him. He said at sentencing, "I'd like Mr. Hoerner to know at no time did I ever try to kill him. If I'd tried to kill him, Mr. Hoerner would have been dead right now." The same for Holmquist, he said.

Jurors will cull through evidence next week to find the truth. About 90 people have been called as potential jurors.

Except for Aceto, none of the original trial participants will return.

Corrigan replaces Esch as prosecutor. Curtis replaces Lympus as judge. Neier and Ed Falla will defend Aceto, who previously defended himself with the help of public defender Mark Sullivan. Sullivan took over for Aceto after he was removed from the courtroom.

Reporter Chery Sabol may be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at csabol@dailyinterlake.com