by Travis Mateer
While I was hoping for a different outcome, the jury took less than an hour to return the verdict of guilty in a case where the city proved I knowingly and purposely violated an order of protection by remaining in the parking lot of the Double Tree Hotel after I was told by someone I didn’t trust that my petitioner would be attending the event.
Before the trial started, the jury selection process featured a spirited discussion on the realities of what an order of protection means for the respondent. A hypothetical restaurant was used (Texas Roadhouse) to provide examples of what I, as the respondent, would be expected to do were I in the middle of a steak dinner and my petitioner entered the restaurant, and it’s simple: I would have to leave immediately.
Why immediately? Because, if I took the time to get the meal packed up to go, that delay could get me a criminal charge. Delaying departure, and scrutinizing distance, were the key elements of my case.
Similarly, if I was at a grocery store, and my petitioner came into the grocery store, I would need to leave immediately. I was thinking about this when I was getting a salad yesterday. If I already had my salad, but hadn’t paid, I would need to just leave the salad behind.
What about an emergency room visit? Would this kind of extreme example require me to find another emergency room to go and risk dying in so that my petitioner can maintain the 1500 foot buffer of safety the courts declared she needed in order to be safe? The strict reading of the law says yes, go die somewhere else, respondent.
It was pointed out by an astute potential juror that were someone ACTUALLY afraid, they probably wouldn’t go to places they knew the respondent would be, and our head city prosecutor assured jurors that it’s the role of the prosecutor to ensure orders of protection aren’t weaponized. Well, considering how many times law enforcement and attorneys have been unsuccessfully used by my petitioner to punish me, I’d say in MY case, this order of protection has absolutely been weaponized.
One of the limitations the jury was frustrated by was the fact they got to know virtually zero context on why the order of protection was ordered by a court in the first place. The natural assumption in this vacuum was that there must have been a REALLY GOOD REASON for a court to allow the limitations of my geographical rights, which includes my right to attend the types of public events I used to cover as a citizen journalist, since . Was there?
In Montana, there are two ways to get an order of protection. The most common follows a criminal charge, usually a PFA (Partner/Family Assault).
Was my order preceded by a criminal charge? No, it wasn’t, which means my petitioner had to prove, in the CIVIL part of this process, that she had “reasonable apprehension of bodily injury”. This was done in front of a SUBSTITUTE judge who told me during the court process that he went to law school with my petitioner, but didn’t think it would impact his judicial impartiality, so he denied my objection. He also denied my request to postpone the hearing so that I had time to find an actual lawyer to represent me.
I had questioned my petitioner’s reasonableness before all this happened when I ended our brief, toxic relationship. The male target she was trying to convince the County Attorney’s office to bring charges against at the time was the victim-project she was obsessed with, and this obsession overlapped with my attempt to expose the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office, but when Susan Hay Patrick of United Way started getting directly involved in this toxic relationship, I got very concerned about where all this was going.
After getting arrested by the police officer who told me he tried ever so hard to resuscitate Sean Stevenson inside the Poverello Center as he drove me to jail, I saw my petitioner’s name appear on the byline of an op-ed in June of last year. This solidified my concerns that the influence of United Way was lurking behind the legal hell I was thrown into on August 3rd, 2023.
Here’s an excerpt of what this “hope-dealer” thinks about solving a problem I spent a decade of my own life trying to address in this town more appropriately before the actions of the Sheriff’s Office radicalized me:
United Way has a DEEP connection to the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office, and part of that connection entails being a money conduit for the Federal money that comes through the Project Safe Neighborhood program, a program I’ve been critical of since it so often leads to drug-bust headlines that have mostly focused on meth trafficking. Due to documents I’ve seen regarding Sean’s case, I suspect Sean may have come across some dangerous information about a meth trafficking case, information that led to him being targeted in the shelter.
The 15 years of writing I’ve done at this blog and 4&20 Blackbirds is now being used in court cases against me, and the petitioner who referenced her creative license concerns in a court hearing that should have been more focused on her alleged fear of bodily injury over a year ago finally has a head she can figuratively mount on her wall. Congrats.
Despite the overall shit-nature of my day yesterday, there was a silver lining.
I was on break for lunch, speed-walking to my box truck, when I saw a familiar figure on the verge of committing a crime by crossing the street when the light was clearly quite red. This offense is known as Jaywalking, so I yelled out to the director of the Missoula Redevelopment Agency, Ellen Buchanan, in the voice I once used before City Council: “DON’T JAYWALK, ELLEN!” I shouted.
The reply from this shadow Mayor of Zoom Town was perfect: “Why not?” Ellen replied, to which I pointed out the obvious criminal nature of her desire to disregard traffic laws.
I don’t know what the short-term future holds besides more of the same lawfare tactics, tactics I’ve been particularly disadvantaged from defending myself against, since my petitioner started working for my lawyer, the idiot who had to apologize for his SHOOT SUPERINTENDENTS joke. From my perspective, the order of protection HAS been weaponized, but in the compartmentalized nature of our criminal justice system, I don’t know in what formal environment this weaponization can be exposed.
I don’t want to give up on this blog, but it’s been obvious for awhile the manner in which I’ve been documenting the developments in my town won’t be allowed to happen in the same way I’ve been doing it. That sucks, but it’s reality, and I’ve been a BIG advocate for dealing with reality as it is, not how I want it to be.
I’ve got some thinking to do now. Stay tuned, I’ll be back soon.
And, as always, thanks for reading.