After pleading guilty to violating his probation, a Cortez man was sentenced to two years in a Durango halfway house.<\/p>\n
In custody at sentencing last week, Dylan Kuhn, 22, begged the court to reinstate his initial probationary term, saying that he would succeed if released.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel stupid for messing up,\u201d Kuhn told Chief District Court Judge Doug Walker. \u201cI messed up, I know I did.\u201d<\/p>\n
The defendant\u2019s mother, sister and girlfriend also asked that Kuhn be released.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve been given a chance,\u201d Walker told Kuhn. \u201cThis is your next chance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noting that Kuhn and his loved ones only addressed how the revocation proceedings had directly impacted his life, Walker reminded the defendant that he pleaded guilty in the 2012 death of his 6-month-old daughter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I\u2019ve heard is how devastating this is to Mr. Kuhn,\u201d said Walker. \u201cWhat I\u2019ve heard is what\u2019s good for Mr. Kuhn, but what\u2019s been lost in all of this is the crime you committed, and I can\u2019t forget that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pointing out that Kuhn had been rejected as a candidate for drug court, District Attorney Will Furse requested that Kuhn be sentenced up to three years in a halfway house so that he could address his mental-health and substance-abuse issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Kuhn achieved some success on probation, but he came off the rails,\u201d said Furse.<\/p>\n
Public defender Kenneth Pace said Kuhn had been surrounded by tragedy as a result of his daughter\u2019s death, adding that he suffered extreme depression. The turmoil deepened after Kuhn was stabbed, sending him into a tailspin, Pace said.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet Mr. Kuhn stay with his family,\u201d Pace pleaded.<\/p>\n
Kuhn was charged with violating probation in June after testing positive for meth and opiates, missing scheduled probation appointments, skipping planned drug and alcohol tests and failing to engage in court ordered counseling.<\/p>\n
Kuhn was initially charged with manslaughter and child abuse after slamming his infant daughter, Sailor Serenity Raine Kuhn, onto a bed on Nov. 1, 2011. Injuries from the incident resulted in the child\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
After pleading guilty to reckless manslaughter, Kuhn was sentenced to 90 days in jail and four years of probation. A media firestorm subsequently erupted as international pundits and bloggers criticized the court\u2019s punishment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
reminds man of guilty plea in daughter\u2019s death<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,131,532],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-109584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-homicide","tag-punishment"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109584"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=109584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}