After determining that neither the District Court nor the youth court has the jurisdiction to sentence Stephen Thomas for tampering with evidence when he was age 17, District Court Judge Michael Prezeau threw out his conviction and released him from jail last week.

Thomas, now 18, was free to leave after being incarcerated for over a year.

Thomas and his former girlfriend, Heather Henson, were arrested in July 2008 for the shooting death of 67-year-old Larry Kingsley at a Sylvan Lake campground. Henson was convicted last December of mitigated attempted deliberate homicide and sentenced to 20 years with all but five suspended.

A jury acquitted Thomas of deliberate homicide and felony theft charges in June, but convicted him of tampering with evidence.

Under Montana law, a minor of a particular age must be tried as an adult for a list of specific crimes. Homicide fell under the category, and though the other two charges do not, the law allowed the state to try all of the charges together in district court.

The defense made a motion last month to transfer Thomas’ case to youth court for sentencing on the evidence tampering charge since he could not be sentenced as an adult on that charge alone. The state opposed the motion, stating that there is no law in place for moving individual charges back to youth court for sentencing.

Prezeau ruled that there was no statute giving district court or youth court the authority to sentence Thomas. Youth court lost jurisdiction when the case was moved to district court, but district court could not sentence the tampering charge without a homicide conviction.

Prezeau concluded that the jury in Thomas’ trial should have been instructed that if it found Thomas not guilty of homicide that it should not consider the theft and tampering offenses.