Court affirms denial of relief petition in Clark Fork stabbing

SANDPOINT — The Idaho Court of Appeals is upholding the summary dismissal of a petition for post-conviction relief sought by a former Bonner County man convicted of stabbing another man at a Clark Fork bar in 2005.

Kenneth Dean Rawley sought post-conviction relief, claiming he obtained ineffective assistance from trial counsel after a jury convicted him of aggravated battery in connection with the attack that left a 26-year-old Clark Fork man with a stab wound to his neck.

The incident occurred in the early-morning hours of New Year’s Day at the former Out of Bounds Tavern.

A jury convicted Rawley, 54, of the felony offense, in addition to misdemeanor battery charges for landing several punches on revelers as he was being forced from the bar.

Rawley was ordered to serve up to 15 years in prison with a chance at parole after serving 12 years.

Rawley appealed the denial of a motion for a mistrial, claiming prosecutorial misconduct and contending that cumulative errors deprived him of due process. He further claimed that his sentence was unduly harsh.

The appeals court, however, affirmed his conviction.

Rawley subsequently filed a petition for relief, arguing that his trial counsel were ineffective in failing to investigate 20-50 witnesses who were at the bar who could have offered exculpatory evidence, but offered no admissible evidence to support the assertion.

“Whether the witnesses would have provided exculpatory evidence is speculation and is not sufficient to survive summary dismissal,” appellate Judge David W. Gratton said in a unpublished opinion released on Tuesday.

Rawley further argued that the defense failed to conduct a pretrial interview of an emergency medical technician who testified that man with blood on his hands and face who was carrying an object that could have been a knife was not Rawley.

“However, Rawley failed to present evidence of how interviewing the EMT before trial would have led to a different defense or affected the result of his trial,” Gratton wrote.

Judges Karen Lansing and John Melanson concurred with Gratton, according to the seven-page opinion.

Rawley is imprisoned at the Idaho Correctional Institution in Orofino, according to the Idaho Department of Correction. He is also serving a consecutive sentence for allegedly assaulting a fellow inmate while he was incarcerated at a state prison in Kuna in 2005.

Rawley, 54, is eligible for parole in 2019, according to the IDOC website.