Mason, Caudle reunite

Jimmie Caudle Jr., whom Kimball Mason prosecuted, said he saw his old nemesis in jail.

By PHIL DAVIDSON

pdavidson@postregister.com

Mason

Jimmie Caudle Jr. and Kimball Mason certainly aren't strangers.

Caudle, 44, has been a fre-

quent defendant in misdemeanor cases in Bonneville County's court system. Mason, 51, was the city prosecutor filing many of those charges.

And it was Caudle who helped expose Mason's corrupt practice of stealing guns and other items from the Idaho Falls Police Department's

evidence room.

Happenstance and a

court calendar reunited them briefly last week at the Idaho Department of Corrections in Boise. No words were exchanged, but the two had a run-in while behind bars.

At least that's how Caudle tells it.

Caudle

He said he made eye contact with Mason in the unit's mess hall; Mason turned away unresponsive.

"He had an orange shoe and a white shoe on," Caudle said of the brief encounter. "I don't know if that was intentional or not."

Mason was sentenced May 30 to a maximum of five years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of grand theft and one count of falsifying a public document.

A day later, Caudle was sentenced to at least 18 months in prison after a jury found him guilty of eluding police -- his first felony conviction.

All correctional inmates are first sent to the Idaho State Correctional Institute's Reception Diagnostic Unit in Boise, where they undergo two weeks of diagnosis before they are sent elsewhere.

As a condition of his sentence, Mason is a participant in the court's retained jurisdiction program, which essentially allows him to be released from the North Idaho Correctional Institute at Cottonwood in six months if he's a model inmate.

Caudle, by his own choosing, did not receive retained jurisdiction. Barring an appeal of his sentence, he'll be staying in prison in Boise.

Though no one other than Caudle could verify that he and Mason saw each other during the intake process, a corrections spokeswoman said it was possible.

Those who receive retained jurisdiction (known as "riders") are kept separate from other inmates in RDU, but it's possible that interaction between inmates of different classifications could occur in the mess hall or exercise area, said Melinda O'Malley Keckler, a spokeswoman with the department of corrections.

The purported encounter between him and Caudle was ironic because it gave Mason a chance to see the man who helped put him in jail.

Caudle possessed a valid court document last summer, when he was a free man, that ordered the return of guns seized from him during a 2002 arrest. When he contacted the Idaho Falls Police Department about it, officials gave him an order Mason used to forfeit the guns to the former prosecutor's possession.

Once Police Chief J. Kent Livsey learned of the competing orders, he became suspicious of Mason, Livsey has said.

After a four-month investigation, the Idaho Attorney General's Office determined Mason stole 18 guns from the police department. After a recent raid of his house, however, police officers found seven more guns in his possession that should have either been destroyed, converted for the department's use or sold to a licensed gun dealer.

Mason moved to the Cottonwood facility Monday, Keckler said.

He's housed like any other offender, living in a dormlike setting with several other inmates, but that could change.

"If safety becomes a concern, that may be reassessed," she said.

Retired 6th District Judge William Woodland, who sentenced Mason, has 180 days to decide whether he'll let Mason out of Cottonwood and put him on probation or order him to serve the rest of his prison sentence.

If he chooses the latter, Mason and Caudle might be reunited once again.

Cops and Courts reporter Phil Davidson can be reached at 542-6750.