Appeals court rejects Pratt motion
SANDPOINT — A Sandpoint man serving a life sentence for the notorious killing of a U.S. Forest Service law officer near Dover 20 years ago has lost out on his latest bid for post-conviction relief.
Joseph Earl Pratt is serving a life sentence for his involvement in the murder of Brent “Jake” Jacobson, a Forest Service officer who tracked him and his brother, James Kevin Pratt, following a botched home-invasion robbery on Comeback Bay Road on Jan. 11, 1989.
The two brothers, then in their late 20s, were accused of barging into the Sagle residence and demanding money and drugs from a group of people there.
The Pratts were armed, disguised with masks, according to court documents.
Bonner County Sheriff’s deputies arrived at the home while the brothers were still inside. One of the occupants was shot twice by one of the brothers, but did not die, documents in the case said.
The brothers managed to flee the scene in a vehicle, touching off a rolling gun battle in which James Pratt opened fire on pursuers with a 12-gauge shotgun. The brothers ditched their vehicle and continued their flight on foot in the rugged Smith Creek drainage.
After a 22-hour search, Jacobson and a Bonner County Sheriff’s deputy discovered the brothers sleeping under a tree and ordered them to surrender. A second gunfight ensued in which Jacobson, 41, was fatally wounded by a shotgun blast.
The brothers fled again, but surrendered at a nearby farmhouse. They were subsequently convicted of first-degree murder, aggravated assault and felony assault on a law officer sentenced to life in prison.
Joseph Pratt has filed more than a half-dozen motions in 1st District Court which aimed to correct sentences which he argued were illegal. Idaho Criminal Rule 35 enables district courts to correct an illegal sentence at any time.
Some of the motions argued issues of double jeopardy and ineffective counsel, but they were denied.
He filed additional Rule 35 motions in 2007 and 2008, claiming that his sentence on the murder charge was illegal because one of the grounds for the conviction was vacated. He also argued his sentences on two felony battery charges were improper because they amounted to multiple punishments for a single act.
But the Idaho Court of Appeals has ruled the later Rule 35 motions are barred by the legal doctrine of res judicata, which prevents the litigation of causes of action which were finally decided in prior proceedings.
“Pratt has already litigated in prior Rule 35 motions the issue whether double jeopardy and merger preclude multiple punishments because the crimes were allegedly one continuous course of conduct. He now seeks to circumvent the appeals process by reasserting the same issues,” Chief Judge Karen Lansing said in a unpublished opinion filed on Oct. 14.
Judges David Gratton and John Melanson concurred, the opinion said.
Joseph Pratt, 48, and James Pratt, 50, are imprisoned at the Idaho State Correctional Institution near Boise, Idaho Department of Correction records show.
Jacobson was the third Forest Service law officer to be killed in the line of duty in the agency’s history. The first occurred in the Manti-LaSal National Forest in Utah in 1918 and the second happened in the Angeles National Forest in California in 1941, according to the Forest Service.