Convicted murderer petitions for relief

SANDPOINT — A Sandpoint man convicted of first-degree murder for a shotgun slaying in 2005 is seeking a new trial or a new prison sentence.

Kenneth Eugene Thurlow argues ineffective assistance of counsel and prosecutorial misconduct, according to his petition for post-conviction relief.

Thurlow filed the civil action in 1st District Court on Sept. 12.

A Bonner County jury convicted Thurlow of shooting Christopher Elliott West at a Sandpoint towing company garage for reasons that remain unclear to this day. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

An alleged accomplice, Christopher Alen Lewers, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in an agreement with the state and received a life sentence with a chance at parole after 20 years.

Thurlow argues in his petition that his attorney, Linda Payne, failed to call two witnesses to the stand who would have testified that Lewers confessed to them that he killed West.

Thurlow also claims that jurors were given faulty instructions and that a taped interview he gave to investigators should have been suppressed prior to trial.

Thurlow further maintains that the state offered him a 10-year sentence in exchange for pleading guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree murder. But Payne advised him if he was found guilty of being an accessory to West’s killing, the most he would serve would be five years.

“Predicated upon the state’s offer and his counsel’s advice, he chose to go to trial. Absent that advice, Thurlow maintains he would have chosen the guarantee of the guilty plea with a ten year term of incarceration,” Thurlow, who is acting as his own counsel, said in the petition.

The Idaho Court of Appeals affirmed Thurlow’s life sentence last year.

Thurlow, 52, is serving his sentence at the Idaho Correctional Center in Kuna, according to the Idaho Department of Correction. Lewers, 29, is imprisoned at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution, which is also located in Kuna.