Competency questioned in teen rape case
SANDPOINT — Questions of mental competency are being raised in the case against a Sandpoint man who was charged with raping a teenager while awaiting sentencing in another teen sex abuse case.
A preliminary hearing was postponed Wednesday due to questions about Dean Duane Stevens Jr.’s ability to comprehend the proceedings against him and assist in his own defense.
A new hearing to determine whether there is enough evidence to try Stevens on the rape charge is pending.
Questions concerning Stevens’ mental fitness were also raised shortly before he was to be sentenced in the earlier sex case, which postponed that hearing. Within weeks, Stevens — who was free on a reduced, $2,500 bond — was accused of raping a 16-year-old girl at an abandoned cabin in Samuels.
Stevens, 38, is being held at the Bonner County Jail and his bail in the new case stands at half a million dollars.
The alleged rape occurred on July 3, a day after the teen was introduced to Stevens at City Beach through a mutual acquaintance.
A clearer picture of what transpired between the defendant and the victim emerged through audio recordings of the hearing in which Bonner County Sheriff’s detectives presented the evidence necessary to charge Stevens with rape.
After their initial meeting on July 2, Stevens offered the teen $5,000 for four nude photos and a sexually explicit audio recording, Det. Gary Johnston told Judge Barbara Buchanan during the probable cause hearing.
Stevens, Johnston testified, picked up the teen the following day at her Bonner County home and took her to the ramshackle cabin, where he used his mobile phone to take erotic pictures of the girl on the hood of a vehicle.
The teen told detectives Stevens bound her with zip ties and rope inside the cabin, raped her and cut the restraints off with a folding knife, according to probable cause hearing testimony.
“He then held a semiautomatic — ‘blued’ or black — to the side of her head and told her that if she told anybody about this that he would kill her and nobody would find her,” Johnston told Buchanan.
Initial press reports in the case incorrectly indicated she was raped at gunpoint due to a discrepancy between a handwritten portion of the court record and the audio recording of the hearing.
Stevens was charged last year with engaging in lewd conduct with another teen in from 2004 to 2006, when she was between the ages of 14 and 15. Stevens entered a plea to a reduced charge of aggravated assault during his trial in 1st District Court.
His sentencing in that case is set for Sept. 8.
In the rape case, a licensed psychologist designated by the Idaho Department of Health & Welfare has been ordered to evaluate Stevens and report back to the court on his fitness to proceed within 30 days.
In a stipulated motion requesting an evaluation of Stevens, Chief Public Defender Isabella Robertson said her client is suffering from acute depression and has expressed suicidal ideations. Stevens also reports hearing voices and experiencing visual hallucinations, Robertson said in the motion.