It's hard to say how many times former North Dakota Workforce Safety and Insurance director Charles "Sandy" Blunt has appealed his felony conviction after a North Dakota jury trial.  You'll recall Blunt was convicted of misapplication of entrusted funds (i.e. your tax dollars).  Republicans in North Dakota lined up to defend Blunt, noting free government money for Republican buddies is pretty standard in North Dakota.  But a jury found him guilty of giving away more than $10,000, so now he's a felon.  He appealed to the North Dakota Supreme Court, claiming there had been some problem below, but, in 2010, the Supreme Court disagreed. Blunt wasn't happy with that outcome, so he appealed to the United States Supreme Court.  They rejected his case on November 29, 2010.

Meanwhile, Blunt expressed concern that he had been denied information he was entitled to as a criminally accused person.  When the prosecutor filed a post-conviction action asking the court to confirm that no injustice had been done at the trial, Blunt challenged his conviction in District Court last summer.  The State noted it could neither confirm nor deny that Blunt may not have received a specific document (or documents), but said Blunt had gotten all the information in that document in other materials disclosed to Blunt.

Meanwhile, a local North Dakota right-wing crack-pot blogger and "scientist," Steve Cates (repeat publisher of plagiarism and dishonorer of promises to pay $100,000 to anybody who could prove he had lied, misrepresented facts or made a mistake), and one of Blunt's friends/business affiliates/business partners, Joe Paduda, concocted allegations that Blunt had been "railroaded" by a corrupt prosecutor. As we've noted before, it also looked like Cates went so far as to file an ethics grievance against Feland. I'm not sure what the outcome of that allegation is/was, but I think it's probably still pending.

So today, the North Dakota Supreme Court determined the information that may or may not have been withheld from Blunt was not a big deal, since he had gotten the information elsewhere.  Here's what the court said...

"...a careful review of the entire record reflects that the information contained in the apparently undisclosed documents was contained in other documents provided to Blunt. Concluding that Blunt has not established he was prejudiced by the apparent discovery violations..."

[and]

Blunt failed to establish he was significantly prejudiced by the State's failure to disclose the requested documents.

State v. Blunt (June 28, 2011) (emphasis added)

So if the information Blunt (and Cates) complained about was contained in documents that were disclosed to Blunt anyway, is it still possible Feland -- who has since been elected as a District Court judge -- could be found to have violated the rules of ethics for attorneys?  

If the Supreme Court has decided that Blunt was not really harmed by this, it would seem as though Cates' ethics allegations against Feland would have to be thrown out too. It'd create an interesting situation if it were not thrown out.

Anyway... could this be the end of the long, sad saga of convicted felon Sandy Blunt, the former director of North Dakota's Workforce Safety and Insurance who was coddled by North Dakota's Republican leaders?  Or will Blunt try, again, to get the right-wingers on the U.S. Supreme Court to cut him a break?  

Stay tuned. 

Comments (15)

Name

Email

Website

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (registered users only)

I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment Preview