By RALPH BARTHOLDT

Staff Writer

COEUR d’ALENE — A prison sentence that has kept a 62-year-old Kootenai County man behind bars for five years was vacated Tuesday after the Idaho Supreme Court found his defense attorney had been deficient.

John Joseph Marr, who is serving a 10-year sentence at the South Idaho Correctional Institute in Boise for a Kootenai County domestic battery conviction, petitioned for three years for his case to be readdressed, arguing that his counsel, public defender Sarah Sears, had been so ineffective as to be prejudicial.

Marr was accused in 2011 by his wife of one week of punching and strangling her after an altercation at the couple’s Coeur d’Alene residence. Although Marr had called authorities after his wife bit him and told them he had acted in self defense, according to court records, he was charged with the two felonies.

He was convicted in 2012 by a Coeur d’Alene jury of domestic battery with traumatic injury and sentenced by District Judge John Mitchell to a 10-year sentence with eight years fixed. The jury acquitted Marr of strangulation.

In his petition, Marr contended that Sears had not investigated his wife’s reputation for being a nasty drunk. Nor did Sears point out to the jury his wife’s inconsistencies in testimony, or that his wife may have been intoxicated on the witness stand.

At a post-conviction evidentiary hearing, Sears told the court that she didn’t purposely exclude evidence.

“I don’t think I knew about it,” Sears said. “I think I missed that.”

After hearing his first petition for post-conviction relief, a Second District Court sided with Marr, but the state appealed the decision to the Idaho Court of Appeals, which upheld the original ruling.

Marr appealed to the Idaho Supreme Court, which agreed that the outcome of Marr’s trial may have been different in the absence of his counsel’s ineffectiveness.

Criminal defendants have a right to reasonably effective legal assistance, Chief Justice Roger Burdick wrote in his decision.

Sears could have called as a witness an Idaho State Police trooper who knew the accuser and would testify to her history of belligerence and aggressiveness. In addition, police reports from previous law enforcement encounters could have been called into evidence.

A lawyer who fails to investigate or introduce evidence that demonstrates a client’s innocence, or raises sufficient doubt is deficient, Burdick wrote in his opinion.

“If Sears had called (the police officer) to testify … Marr’s claim of self defense would have been more credible and it is possible the jury would have acquitted.”