Lawyers are filing motions and fine-tuning legal arguments in the case of Harold Nakai, who is suspected of raping and killing a Durango woman in 2007.
A three-week retrial is scheduled to begin March 14 in 6th Judicial District Court in Durango for Nakai, who was sentenced in October 2008 to 48 years in prison after being found guilty of felony sexual assault.
He won an appeal based on certain statements he made to police that should have been deemed involuntary and suppressed at trial. Nakai, a Navajo speaker, may have misunderstood police investigators, and, likewise, police may have misinterpreted his comments and gestures, the appeals court ruled.
Nakai appeared Friday in District Court wearing an orange jail-issued jumpsuit and headphones that allowed him to hear his Navajo translator.
Nakai and two co-defendants – Derrick Nelson Begaye and Carlton Lee Yazzie – were accused of taking a drunken Nicole Leigh Redhorse, 34, to the Spanish Trails Inn & Suites on June 6, 2007, where they continued serving her alcohol and had sex with her. A blunt object, perhaps a broken hammer handle, was used to assault her vaginally, causing injuries that led to her bleeding to death.
Redhorse’s blood-alcohol level at the time of her death was about 0.47 percent, almost six times the level for drunken driving.
The La Plata County coroner at the time said the injuries were the worst of their kind that she had ever seen, but Redhorse could have survived had the suspects sought medical care. The coroner said Redhorse would have been too intoxicated to consent to sexual activity.
Prosecutors sought first-degree murder charges against all three suspects, but juries in all three cases acquitted the defendants of the charge. Prosecutors were not able to produce the blunt object used to cause the injuries, and they were unable to prove who may have caused the injuries. All three were convicted of felony sexual assault and criminally negligent homicide.
Nakai’s case is being prosecuted by Dan Hotsenpiller, district attorney in Montrose, and Janet Drake, senior assistant attorney general with Colorado Department of Law. He is being represented by the public defender’s office in Durango.
Special prosecutors were appointed because 6th Judicial District Attorney Todd Risberg represented Begaye in 2008 when he worked as a defense lawyer.
Nakai is charged with sexually assaulting a victim who was physically helpless, a Class 2 felony, and criminally negligent homicide, a Class 5 felony.
According to a motions hearing Friday, defense lawyers plan to argue that Nakai didn’t cause Redhorse’s injuries and had no knowledge that she had been assaulted in such a manner. They also will portray her as an alcoholic who was able to function and make decisions with a high blood-alcohol level.
Prosecutors will contend it doesn’t matter who caused her injuries; rather, the defendant was part of a scheme to get her drunk and allow her to be sexually assaulted.
In a strange twist, Begaye and Yazzie are suspected of assaulting a “jail-house snitch” last week at Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility in Fremont County. The victim apparently testified against them at trial in 2008.
Begay and Yazzie have been subpoenaed to testify at Nakai’s retrial, but they are expected to plead the Fifth Amendment, which protects them from incriminating themselves.
shane@durangoherald.com
