High court to review Rawley case

SANDPOINT — The Idaho Supreme Court is taking up the case of a Bonner County man serving a 15-year prison sentence after being convicted of stabbing another man at a Clark Fork tavern in 2005.

The high court is scheduled to hear Kenneth Dean Rawley’s petition for review on Tuesday in Boise.

Rawley has long professed his innocence in the New Year’s Eve altercation in which a 26-year-old man was stabbed in neck. Blaine Ben Stevens survived the attack.

A jury convicted Rawley in the attack and he was sentenced to serve no less than 12 and no more than 15 years in prison. Rawley sought to have his sentence and judgment overturned, but the Idaho Court of Appeals

declined to disturb them.

However, the appeals court found several errors had occurred during his 1st District Court trial, but affirmed the judgment against Rawley.

In his petition for review, Rawley alleges prosecutorial misconduct deprived him of his right to a fair trial and that the district court erred in denying a defense motion for a retrial. Rawley also asserts that Judge Steve Verby abused his discretion by imposing the 12- to 15-year prison sentence for aggravated battery.

The prosecution of Rawley followed a bar fight in the former Out of Bounds Tavern. Rawley was accused of punching several revelers as he was being forced from the tavern and stabbing Stevens in the neck once the brawl moved outside.

While serving his sentence, Rawley was convicted in Ada County of assaulting a fellow inmate seriously enough to require hospitalization. He was given a five-year sentence which is running concurrently with the sentence imposed in the Bonner County case.

Rawley, 50, is serving his sentences at the Idaho Correctional Center in Kuna. He is eligible for parole in 2019, according to the Idaho Department of Correction.