Couture found guilty of McLeod homicide, tampering

By Maggie Plummer

POLSON - Although it took more than two and a half years for James Couture's murder trial to begin, it took a Lake County jury less than an hour last Thursday to unanimously find him guilty on all three counts: felony deliberate homicide and two counts of felony tampering with or fabricating evidence.

Couture was convicted of fatally shooting 19-year-old Daniel McLeod of Ronan at least 20 times and dumping his body into the Flathead River from Sloan's Bridge, in early May of 2004.

The long-awaited trial, postponed eight times due to an array of legal complications, lasted three and a half days.

Couture did not testify.

His sentencing has been set for Jan. 11 at 9 a.m. The prosecution is not seeking the death penalty in the case.

According to court officials, defense attorney John Putikka was already working on appeals in the case, the same day the guilty verdict was read.

During the trial, both he and Chief Deputy County Attorney Mitch Young appeared to dance around the ticklish, potentially key issue of self-defense.

Couture, 47, knew that McLeod had repeatedly stolen marijuana from his (Couture's) house in the Pache homesites east of Ronan. On May 2, 2004, when the defendant found McLeod again burglarizing his house, he shot and killed him.

Couture was also found guilty of putting McLeod's body in his car, throwing his body into the lower Flathead River, giving the rifle he'd used to a friend, and throwing away the magazines.

The prosecution's case consisted of witnesses who described Couture as an angry, reclusive man who had posted signs at his home threatening the lives of those who had been stealing from him. Among those names were those of Couture's own sons, A. J. and James.

Other witnesses, from the Montana Crime Lab in Missoula, provided expert testimony on ballistics and DNA analysis.

Also testifying for the prosecution were Lake County detectives who had investigated the McLeod case.

The most dramatic testimony presented during the trial was that of the defendant's ex-girlfriend, Tina Thatcher, who entered the courtroom in a wheelchair due to problems with multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, and other illnesses.

Appearing very frail, Thatcher walked slowly with a cane to the witness stand.

She recalled the change that took place in Couture's behavior toward the end of their relationship: "He wouldn't open his door. He locked himself in his house and wouldn't answer the phone. He was much less interested in being with people..."

Nervously glancing at the defendant, who appeared to only look down at the table in front of him, Thatcher asked for a glass of water. At one point, after looking at Couture, the witness shuddered. She trembled during most of her testimony.

Asked by Young if she was afraid of the potential consequences of testifying, Thatcher said yes, she was afraid of what might happen.

She described several break-ins at Couture's house, one of which involved a door being pried open with a crowbar and things being broken.

She said that Couture's reaction was to become "very, very angry," but not afraid.

"He said he would kill them when he caught them," she testified. "I watched the house and he took off looking for people. He told me to hold them there and shoot them, or call him and he would come take care of them himself."

According to Thatcher, Couture also suggested that she dress like him and drive to town, while he would stay at the house and kill them when they broke in.

"Yes, I thought he was serious," she said, trembling. "It scared me."

She called the Sheriff's Office anonymously, she said, because she did not want to be any part of this.

Putikka attempted to discredit Thatcher, portraying her memory as unreliable due to medications. She told him that her MS affects her memory, but that her memory the day of her testifying was "pretty clear."

When Putikka cross-examined her about why she did not go to the police immediately to report what Couture was telling her, and why she did not warn the kids or their families of the danger, Thatcher said, "I was scared of what Jim might do to me."

In Young's re-direct, he asked if she had talked about Jim Couture's threats to anyone. She answered that she talked to her therapist about him. "I thought he was just blowing off steam, that most of it was just anger," Thatcher said.

Another witness, Emmanual Littlewolf, had had a series of conversations with Couture while in jail, and testified about many details of the murder scene.

When it was the defense's turn to present a case, Putikka said only that "the defense rests."

In his closing statement, Young stressed that "Daniel McLeod was a human being...not a perfect human being, but a human being."

There was ample evidence, Young said, that Couture had acted purposely and knowingly when he caused the death of McLeod.

"It's ironic that the day this trial started, Daniel would have been 22 years old," Young said, adding that any opportunity for rehabilitation was denied him.

"Rather than go to the police, rather than getting rid of his marijuana, the defendant plotted, planned and waited...not for justice, but for revenge," the prosecutor said.

Putikka asked the jury to think about whether or not there was proof of where McLeod actually died, who actually fired the shots that killed McLeod, why there were two guns used, where that other gun went, and how many shooters were there. "Do we know how many people were present in that house?" the defense attorney asked. "What proof is there that Jim was even at the house when Daniel was killed? Who owned that (rifle)?"

Putikka also tried to discredit Littlewolf's testimony: "How much of his information could have come from the media?" he asked. "In this case, there are a lot of questions left unanswered."

Young told the jurors that the case did not rely only on circumstantial evidence, because they had the defendant's own statement to Littlewolf. "Jim said, 'I shot him, killed him, threw his body in the river,'" Young said. "News reports could not have gleaned this kind of detail. There's only one place that information came from, it came from the defendant."

He asked the jury to avoid getting sidetracked.

Young commented that he found it irritating when Putikka called McLeod's death a "tragic" loss: "The defense attorney spent a lot of time tearing down the victim...to lower his worth as a human being, to make it OK that he got killed."

The prosecutor's concluding comment to the jury was: "You've got so much circumstantial evidence in this case, you don't even need Emmanuel Littlewolf's testimony."