Shooting won't be prosecuted as capital case

SANDPOINT - The state is opting not to seek the death penalty against a Sagle man charged with the first-degree murder of Eli Holt.

Convicted murderers in Idaho can be sentenced to death if one of nearly a dozen aggravating circumstances can be found to exist beyond a reasonable doubt. The statutory aggravating circumstances include various sex crimes, torture, financial gain, violence against a law officer, kidnapping or burglary.

Bonner County Prosecutor-elect Louis Marshall said Thursday that such circumstances are not present in the murder case pending against James M. Anderson.

"I have reviewed the facts of this case and do not find that any of the necessary aggravating circumstances exist to warrant the imposition of death," he said in a media statement.

Anderson, 28, is charged with shooting Holt, 30, in the head with a handgun during a confrontation on Thanksgiving at Anderson's home in the Travel America trailer park.

Holt, according to sheriff's investigators, went with a relative to Anderson's home and an argument broke out. What ensued is in dispute.

Anderson claimed he was seized by the two men and threatened with a knife. Ian James Freir, Holt's 23-year-old half-brother, told a detective that Anderson armed himself with the .44-caliber magnum and opened fire on Holt without warning, court records said.

Detective Sgt. Howard Burke testified last month that the altercation could be linked to a battery on a friend of Holt's in October. Anderson was suspected of aiding and abetting the battery, although he was never charged.

Patrick Keith Eroso Ziarnick, 29, has been charged in connection with the alleged assault on Holt's friend and is awaiting trial.

Anderson remains jailed with bail set at $500,000. A preliminary hearing is pending in the magistrate division of 1st District Court.

The most recent capital case in Bonner County involved the kidnapping and execution-style slaying of Jeremy Scott in 1995. A jury convicted Faron E. Lovelace and a judge sentenced him to death.

The sentence was subsequently vacated pursuant to a U.S. Supreme Court case from Arizona, which held that the aggravating circumstances question must be decided by a jury, rather than a judge.

Lovelace was re-sentenced in 2005 to life without the possibility of parole.