Dakota Beacon

State's Attorney Richard Riha	Assistant State's Attorney Cynthia Feland	Assistant State's Attorney Lloyd Suhr

Once inappropriately added by the Burleigh County State's Attorney's Office (BCSAO), the sick leave and moving expense issues (which were known by the prosecutors to not be crimes) were used as a major subject basis to portray Blunt unfavorably with innuendo that could not be supported by facts. Prosecutor Lloyd Suhr’s opening statement illustrates the methodology employed over and over during the trial to portray Blunt as someone who believed (especially for his friends like Spencer) in “circumvention of the rules ... there is a proper way, and then there is Mr. Blunt's way.” Suhr begins with the “bonuses” to WSI employees and then focuses almost exclusively on the sick leave, moving expenses, and grant money before ever discussing the original case of gift certificates and meeting expenses. BCSAO’s witness questioning and trial topics continued to follow this same pattern.

Much of BCSAO’s presented case was built on and around Spencer’s leaving WSI and Blunt’s supposed unethical behaviors regarding Spencer. The word “Spencer” appears 249 times over 1,043 pages of trial transcript or an average once every 4.2 pages across the ENTIRE trial transcript. All of the primary witnesses for the prosecution began their testimony with an extensive discussion of Spencer’s circumstances upon leaving WSI. It is difficult to come up with an objective criteria to measure just how prominent the FAKE issues of Spencer were in the entire trial, but I believe it required between 30 to 40 percent. An awful lot for entirely bogus issues! Had Feland not lied and manipulated these items into the case as crimes, a significant portion of BCSAO’s argument, testimony, and opening/closing statements would have been absent. The effectiveness of portraying Blunt using this blatantly dishonest technique cannot of course be quantified, but I conjecture that it was quite pivotal in procuring an unjustified outcome.