Man indicted by grand jury
SANDPOINT — A Priest River man accused of molesting two Bonner County children last year was arrested Wednesday on a grand jury indictment.
William David Clark was taken into custody on a $300,000 warrant following a preliminary hearing in magistrate court.
Clark is slated to make an initial appearance today in magistrate court, although the grand jury’s indictment will remain sealed until he is arraigned in 1st District Court.
It’s not clear if the grand jury indictment pertains to the pending molestation allegations, although it did supplant them on Wednesday. Bonner County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Shane Greenbank moved to dismiss the charges in light of the grand jury indictment.
Greenbank said he could not comment on the nature of the charges because the indictment remains under seal. Clark’s defense counsel, Jeremy Featherston, said he strongly suspects the grand jury indictment will be a reiteration of the criminal complaint that was dismissed on Wednesday.
Clark was taken into custody in a courthouse hallway steps away from where grand jury proceedings were still ongoing. But due to the inherent secrecy of the proceedings, it could not be ascertained if they involved allegations against Clark or were related to some other pending criminal matter.
The grand jury was impaneled earlier this month. The last time a grand jury was formed in Bonner County was in 2010.
Clark, 45, was charged earlier this month with lewd and lascivious conduct and sexual abuse of a minor. Charging documents in that case alleged that Clark touched the genitals of a boy between the ages of 5-6 and persuaded the boy and a 3-year-old girl to have sexual contact.
Clark denied the allegations when he was confronted by Priest River Police and contended they were manufactured by the boy’s father, the arrest report said. Clark allegedly failed a polygraph examination he insisted upon taking, the report added.
Clark’s defense counsel, Jeremy Featherston, expressed a dim view of grand jury proceedings after Wednesday’s hearing.
Featherston said such proceedings enable the state to avoid losing a weak case at a preliminary hearing and an ensuing political backlash if it can’t win a conviction since the grand jury caused the charges to be brought.
Featherston added that grand juries are not presented with any exculpatory information, which he equated to looking through a pinhole instead of at both sides of a case.
“They only see what is directly in front of them,” he said.