Jury convicts Sagle man of second-degree murder

SANDPOINT — A Bonner County jury convicted a Sagle man Tuesday of second-degree murder for the slaying of Elvin “Eli” Holt in Sagle nearly 11 months ago.

James Matthew Anderson closed his eyes as the verdict was read by a 1st District Court clerk and wept quietly afterward.

The jury’s decision was greeted with gasps of relief from Holt’s family and friends and gasps of anguish by Anderson’s family and supporters.

Judge Steve Verby ordered both sides of the courtroom gallery to refrain from interacting with one another after the verdict was announced. The gallery was vacated in separate stages to help keep the peace.

A sentencing hearing is pending. Anderson, 29, faces a prison sentence of 10 years to life. He remains held at the Bonner County Jail.

The jury of seven men and five women deliberated for about four hours before concluding Anderson acted without justification and with deliberate malice when he shot Holt, 30, in the face with a .44-caliber revolver on Nov. 27, 2008.

The jury had the option of considering a range of lesser offenses, including voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter and various firearms offenses.

None of the jurors appeared to glance toward the defense table as they filed back into the courtroom to hear their verdict read. The verdict capped an emotional six-day trial in which two dozen people testified, including two eyewitnesses to the shooting outside Anderson’s trailer that Thanksgiving night.

Anderson initially told an investigator he opened fire in self-defense after Holt and Holt’s stepbrother, Ian James Freir, attacked him outside the trailer in retaliation for a beating Anderson participated in a month earlier on a friend of Holt’s. Anderson subsequently stated that the shooting was an accident.

Anderson did not testify, although audio recordings of him being interviewed by Bonner County Sheriff’s Det. Howard Burke and Dispatcher Ron Cobb were played for the jury.

“Yeah, I just shot somebody,” Anderson told the dispatcher.

“Was it an accident?” Cobb asks without missing a beat.

“No,” Anderson immediately replies, explaining that he was being roughed up and threats against him and his family were made.

During his closing arguments, Prosecutor Louis Marshall replayed the 911 recording and pointed out that Anderson sounds shaken, but relatively collected during the exchange with Cobb.

Marshall also highlighted the fact that Anderson did not indicate the shooting was an accident in his written statement and reminded jurors that his story changed well into the ordeal, during a recorded interview with Burke.

“Eight hours after he’s had time to think, it’s an ‘accident,’” Marshall said arguing that Anderson must have realized a claim of self-defense would not hold up to scrutiny.

Chief Public Defender Isabella Robertson maintained that Holt and Freir’s conduct on the night in question would have alarmed any reasonable person quietly relaxing at home in the last few hours of the holiday.

There was no question Holt and Freir were drunk when they turned up unannounced at Anderson’s home clad in dark clothing, Robertson said. She also underscored the testimony of the defendant’s wife, Leanne Anderson, who told jurors earlier in the trial that Holt had indicated to her that he had been watching the home for some time.

“He picked up the weapon in self-defense. He did not fire it in self-defense. It was an accident,” said Robertson, who argued that the Freir bumped Anderson’s hand during the confrontation, causing the cocked weapon to discharge.

In accentuating a theme of the state’s case, Marshall showed jurors a postmortem photo of Holt’s hand, which was clutching a ring of car keys — an indication Holt appeared to be in the process of leaving when he was slain by Anderson.

“There’s no legal excuse for what he did,” Marshall said during his rebuttal remarks.