{"id":64782,"date":"2019-10-04T21:04:55","date_gmt":"2019-10-05T03:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/sexual-assault-case-dismissed-against-durango-man\/"},"modified":"2019-10-05T03:04:55","modified_gmt":"2019-10-05T03:04:55","slug":"sexual-assault-case-dismissed-against-durango-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/sexual-assault-case-dismissed-against-durango-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Sexual assault case dismissed against Durango man"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Prosecutors
Prosecutors asked a 6th Judicial District Court judge to dismiss a sexual assault charge against a Devin Bond of Durango. Bond\u2019s defense lawyer said the case was dropped after \u201ca basic failure to investigate this case by the government.\u201d<\/span>Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Prosecutors have dropped a case against a Durango man accused of participating in a gang rape-style sexual assault \u2013 the second suspect to have charges dropped.<\/p>\n

Assistant District Attorney Sean Murray asked District Court Judge William Herringer on Sept. 20 to dismiss a felony sexual assault charge against Devin Bond, 23, who spent 19 months in La Plata County Jail on $50,000 bail, said Katie Whitney, his Durango defense lawyer.<\/p>\n

A 12-person jury could not reach a unanimous decision in Bond\u2019s case<\/a> after a weeklong trial held in May. Whitney said \u201cthe case kind of fell apart\u201d because of \u201ca basic failure to investigate this case by the government, by the people prosecuting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 He lost his life when he went to jail,\u201d Whitney said of her client. \u201cYou take somebody\u2019s liberty for 19 months, they have to rebuild their lives \u2013 plus you\u2019re traumatized by the whole experience. I don\u2019t think people understand what this does to a person to have their liberty taken like that. They have to rebuild everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

District Attorney Christian Champagne said, \u201cWe\u2019ve certainly investigated the case. We\u2019ve done everything appropriate and necessary to do a factual investigation, even going above and beyond standard operating procedure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prosecutors discovered new information as they investigated the case that led law enforcement to drop charges, but Champagne declined to discuss specifics.<\/p>\n

The district attorney also declined to provide details about prosecutors\u2019 decision to drop charges or how prosecutors went \u201cabove and beyond standard operating procedure\u201d because of anticipated litigation from a co-defendant.<\/p>\n

Law enforcement accused Bond and two others, James Zink and Anthony Fitts, of sexually assaulting a woman at gunpoint on the night of Oct. 14, 2017, in a vehicle that was driven to various locations around Durango. Zink and Fitts pleaded guilty.<\/p>\n

Judge Herringer sentenced Zink, 19 at the time, to 14 years in prison for second-degree assault and 10 years\u2019 probation on two counts of attempted sexual assault. The judge also required Zink to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.<\/a><\/p>\n

The District Attorney\u2019s Office anticipates litigation challenging Zink\u2019s guilty plea \u201cin short order,\u201d Champagne said.<\/p>\n

The court released Fitts from his six-year prison sentence in May after the alleged victim testified in Bond\u2019s trial that the sexual contact between her and Fitts was consensual. Murray called Fitts\u2019 conviction a \u201cmanifest injustice\u201d in an unopposed motion to nullify the court\u2019s decision to send him to prison for six years.<\/a><\/p>\n

bhauff@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Defense lawyer blasts law enforcement for \u2018basic failure to investigate\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[168,28,1515,524],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-64782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-crime","tag-headlines","tag-judiciary-system-of-justice","tag-sexual-assault"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64782","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=64782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64782"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=64782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}