FACTS IN A NUTSHELL: Havre, Montana, Thanksgiving 2006. A “flop house” where poor addicts have gathered to shelter against a 7-degree freeze. Those addicts? Seven Native Americans and one white man, all intoxicated. A fight ensues. Later, another Native man arrives and finds the white man, Lloyd “Lucky” Kvelstad, lying unconscious on a loveseat, wet, partially naked, his face beaten, feces smeared down his legs.
When the Native shakes him, Lucky slides off the loveseat and lands face down, directly below it, arms to his sides. EMTS arrive, fail to treat Lucky or even turn him over, possibly take a radial pulse but nothing more, and declare him dead. Lucky lies alone on the freezing floor, face down, for the next several hours. Witnesses draw diagrams of Lucky’s “body” lying exactly below the loveseat as described. Yet no crime scene photos show him there. Instead, the first photo, taken nearly 3 hours later, shows that Lucky crawled forward about two feet, his arms now lie up near his head, and his fingers curl into the carpet. Fresh blood trails show this movement. That first photo, Photo 42, gets buried among the 100 photos the cops give to the defense in discovery.
The crime scene video, full of skips, shows Lucky four hours after his supposed death, limp, no lividity, no rigor mortis, fresh urine on his thighs. One cop asks, “I wonder if this guy didn’t die right away?” Then that cop bags Lucky’s head and seals it with tape. He waits 30 minutes to call the coroner who arrives 45 minutes after that. The coroner finds Lucky’s arms warm to the touch, no lividity, little rigor mortis, no bag on his head. The pathologist finds no cause of death to a medical certainty.
Initial witness statements declare that Buggz was passed out on a second couch, too drunk to wake up, let alone fight anyone. Yet in 2008 Buggz was convicted of Lucky’s murder at a jury trial, the verdict based on fabricated and altered evidence that no one discovered until our team did, beginning in 2015. That discovery exposed an elaborate coverup by law enforcement, prosecutors, and others in Montana’s judicial system. It is, in fact, the worst coverup I’ve ever seen in 30+ years of criminal law practice. So, prove us right or wrong, but please help.
