Judge orders consolidation of charges

A North Idaho judge on Thursday ordered prosecutors to consolidate or reduce some of the 11 charges filed against an Athol man accused of fatally shooting another man in the head with a rifle, just days after Kootenai County prosecutor Bill Douglas announced he would not seek the death penalty in the case.

Douglas, on Monday, withdrew the county’s intention to seek the death penalty against Richard Hanes.

“While this is a grave and serious crime, it doesn’t rise to the level of depravity of other murder cases,” where defendants did not face capital punishment, Douglas said.

Hanes, 30, is accused of killing 40-year-old Eddie Edmiston on the morning of Feb. 6. Hanes was scheduled to appear in court that morning to be sentenced for beating Carol Mae Hanes in June of 2003. The two were married at the time, but they divorced by December. Instead of going to court, police documents say, Hanes drove to his ex-wife’s house in Athol, broke inside and ordered Edmiston and Carol Mae Hanes to various rooms at rifle-point.

Hanes is accused of shooting Edmiston once through the thigh and then chasing the fleeing man outside the house and firing a second, fatal shot into the back of his head.

With the death penalty lifted, Hanes was in court Thursday morning where Kootenai County Public Defender John Adams argued that prosecutors had used too broad a brush when filing 11 charges against Hanes. For instance, Adams told 1st District Court Judge John Luster, each shot of the rifle carried a separate charge — one for aggravated battery and the other for first-degree murder. He said Hanes also should not be charged with attempted first-degree murder of Carol Mae Hanes, arguing there is no evidence presented by prosecutors or police that the defendant ever actually attempted to kill his ex-wife and stage her death as a suicide.

Carol Mae Hanes testified at a preliminary hearing that her ex-husband told her he came to the house that morning to kill her by slashing her wrists and leaving her body in the shower. Hanes told her he was surprised to find Edmiston in the house, as well as three of the six children the couple had been raising together, Carol Mae Hanes testified.

Kootenai County Sheriff’s detectives found a sheathed knife in Hanes’ pickup truck. Adams argued there was no evidence the knife was ever brought into the house, or that the alleged death threat was ever attempted. He also asked that three counts of first-degree kidnap — one for each of the children held in the house after Edmiston was shot — be reduced or dismissed.

Of the two rifle shots, Luster said “What we have here is clearly a continuing course of conduct” and dismissed the battery charge. The judge, while refusing to dismiss the attempted murder charge, told prosecutors they must show evidence to support the charge.

He also reduced the three kidnap charges to second-degree kidnapping, agreeing with defense arguments that evidence does not show Hanes intended “great bodily harm” to the children, an element needed for the first-degree charges.

Hanes is scheduled for trial Aug. 23.