Mason heading to district court

Former I.F. prosecutor will stand trial on 13 new felonies

By PHIL DAVIDSON

pdavidson@postregister.com

The judge who presided over Mason's previous criminal case is expected to again be on the bench.

Former Idaho Falls Prosecutor Kimball Mason will stand trial on 13 new felonies provided he pleads not guilty to the charges.

On Wednesday, Custer County Magistrate Judge Charles Roos ruled that Idaho Deputy Attorney General Jay Rosenthal presented enough evidence for Mason to stand trial.

Roos added, however, that his ruling reflected the probable-cause standard set by the state of Idaho on preliminary hearings, which he said is "minimal at best."

Mason will enter a plea at his arraignment, which has not been scheduled. First, court officials must find a judge. Most district court judges have recused themselves from the case because of their working history with Mason, who served as city prosecutor for 12 years.

A court official has indicated that retired 6th District Judge William Woodland will preside over Mason's arraignment, but an official order on the assignment will not be drafted until Friday.

Once Woodland is assigned, it's expected he'll set the hearing in the next few weeks.

Woodland presided over the state's initial case against Mason.

On May 30, he sentenced Mason to one to five years in prison after the 52-year-old pleaded guilty to two counts of grand theft and one count of falsifying a public document. Woodland "retained jurisdiction" in that case, though, and sent Mason to the North Idaho Correctional Institute for six months. The judge has until Nov. 29 to decide whether he'll order Mason to serve the remainder of his maximum five-year prison term or allow him to be placed on supervised probation.

The attorney general's office filed a memo three weeks ago asking Woodland to order Mason to prison.

The judge is expected to revisit Mason's original case soon, said both Rosenthal and Mason's attorney, Jim Archibald.

Efforts to reach Woodland were unsuccessful.

In the meantime, Mason is an inmate at the Bonneville County Jail.

Roos' decision Wednesday came after two days of testimony by 13 witnesses subpoenaed by the attorney general's office. The witnesses' testimony shed light on the state's allegations that Mason obtained guns from the Idaho Falls Police Department's evidence room to keep for himself and that on at least six occasions, Mason stamped judges' signatures on court orders to convince evidence custodians to give him weapons.

The charges are similar to those he was convicted of in May.

Mike Dillon, the attorney general's chief criminal investigator, testified Wednesday that the new charges stem from guns that Mason took from the evidence room but lied about and said he destroyed.

In the previous case, investigators discovered Mason had taken 51 guns from the evidence room since 2001.

The attorney general's office was able to account for 18 of those guns, so prosecutors were prepared to charge him with 18 counts of grand theft.

Through a plea deal, however, Mason was charged with three felonies on the condition that he would fess up about what happened to the rest of the weapons.

He said he'd destroyed most of them, but a June 2 raid of Mason's home belied his statements, Dillon said. He said investigators found nine of those 51 guns during the search.

"I never had a definite feeling he was lying to me until the June 2 raid," Dillon said.

During closing arguments Wednesday, Archibald said some of the guns Mason is alleged to have stolen might have belonged to defendants, not the city, so the defendants need to testify whether there was an agreement to forfeit their property to the city.

Rosenthal said the argument was moot.

"You're not allowed to possess stolen property," he said.

The Mason case

SO FAR: Though he is still serving time on his May 30 convictions for grand theft and falsifying a public document, former Idaho Falls Prosecutor Kimball Mason is facing 13 new felonies. State investigators allege he was stealing guns from the Idaho Falls Police Department's evidence room using court orders that he forged in some cases.

THE LATEST: Magistrate Judge Charles Roos ruled Wednesday that the Idaho attorney general's office presented enough evidence to forward Mason's case to district court, where he'll likely stand trial on the 13 counts.

WHAT'S NEXT: Retired 6th District Judge William Woodland is expected to preside over Mason's new case and will likely set an arraignment in the next few weeks.