Appeals court sides with judge

PALMER — Except for one small piece, an appeals court Friday stood by the way a Superior Court Judge handled a rape trial best described as unusual.

According to a ruling by Judge David Mannheimer with the state appeals court, Viktor Natekin should have seen the two charges he was convicted of at trial — attempted first-degree sexual assault and second-degree sexual assault — merged for purposes of sentencing.

Defendants are often charged with multiple crimes for the same action, the theory being that the jury will choose which level of offense best fits the crime. Those “lesser-included” charges are supposed to merge at sentencing because the state’s constitution bars charging someone twice for the same criminal action. That didn’t happen here, Mannheimer wrote, so the appeals court sent the case back to Superior Court Judge Eric Smith for re-sentencing.

The case began in December 2006 when a 17-year-old girl went to visit her friend. While there, she visited another apartment complex.

“Natekin and (Anatoly) Gravolnik were there to help (Lilly) Zidrashko move, but when (the 17-year-old) arrived, no actual ‘moving’ was taking place. Instead, Zidrashko, Natekin and Gravolnik were in the kitchen dancing, eating and drinking. All three of them were ‘very intoxicated,’” Mannheimer wrote in his decision.

When the teen went to use the bathroom, Natekin grabbed her, pulled her into the bedroom and sexually assaulted her. She tried to take a phone call and he threw her phone against the wall. She later was able to retrieve it and called her friend in the other apartment, managing to ask for help before Natekin took the phone away again.

The friend rescued her and then police got involved. Natekin was arrested. But after trial started, the girl didn’t show up to testify. Prosecutors got a warrant for her arrest and she was picked up that evening and brought to a court hearing the next day.

“At the hearing, (the teen) stated that she had been contacted by both Natekin’s wife and Natekin’s brother, both of whom offered her money if she did not testify against Natekin. According to (the teen), Natekin’s brother flew in from Seattle and gave her $300 just for meeting with him. Later, Natekin’s wife met with (the teen) and offered to pay her between $10,000 and $15,000 if she did not testify at Natekin’s trial,” according to Mannheimer’s ruling.

That threw the criminal trial into disarray.

Smith had to figure out whether and how to let evidence of alleged attempted bribery into the rape trial. He also had to figure out what to tell all the parties involved regarding who they could talk to about the bribery allegations and had to decide what information to keep secret and how secret to make it.

Eventually, the evidence did come in, but Natekin’s wife exercised her Fifth Amendment rights, refusing to testify about the alleged bribery scheme out of concern that it might implicate her in criminal charges.

A search of court records Monday failed to turn up any bribery charges filed against Natekin or his wife, but the saga did give Natekin a handful of points he raised on appeal.

To the charge that Smith didn’t allow him a fair trial because parts of it were closed, Mannheimer writes that the hearings weren’t actually closed, or at least not closed enough to have stepped on Natekin’s constitutional rights.

To the charge that the judge encouraged Natekin’s wife to refuse to testify about the bribery, Mannheimer writes that actually, to the contrary, Smith informed the wife of her rights and was prepared to have her testify before she backed out.

To the charge that Smith should have allowed Natekin’s attorney to ask the victim about allegations she used drugs the day she didn’t show up for court, Mannheimer said Smith was well within his discretion in ruling that the evidence didn’t pertain enough to the rape charges and didn’t even show that the victim had in fact used drugs.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.