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BOISE — A judge has issued an order imposing sanctions on a Mountain Home attorney who filed an error-filled motion asking to intervene in the murder case of Chad Daybell.
Terry Ratliff filed the motion on March 29 at 11:42 p.m., just two days before jury selection was set to begin in the trial. Several words were misspelled — including "motion," "continue," and "proceedings," and Ratliff had the case number wrong. He claimed three times in the motion that he represented Daybell as his defense attorney, which was not true, and requested Judge Steven Boyce continue the trial.
Boyce sealed the motion and held a hearing on the matter at the Ada County Courthouse on April 18. He told Ratliff he was angry the lawyer was wasting time and resources in the middle of a capital murder case.
Ratliff explained he used a template when he filed the motion and blamed the many mistakes on the fact he was nervous.
"This is a template form, and I simply forgot to take it off," Ratliff said. "In the body of the motion, I say I am filing it without permission of the defendant or his counsel."
Boyce asked who he was representing. Ratliff responded he should have signed the motion as "citizen."
"You've got your name, your Idaho state bar number, your Ratliff Law Office and attorney for defendant. You're telling me you mistakingly filed something as a citizen and not an attorney?" Boyce asked. "Why were you doing that on a Friday night at almost midnight?"
Ratliff responded that he needed to do something to slow the case down, to which Boyce replied, "This trial is scheduled for how many years, and you wanted to slow it down the day before it started?"
The judge ruled Ratliff violated the Idaho Rules of Civil Procedure and sanctioned the attorney. He was ordered to reimburse the defense, prosecution and court for their time spent working on the issue.
In a written order filed Monday, Boyce said John Prior, Daybell's attorney, spent three hours addressing the "frivolous pleading." Prior's hourly rate is $350/hour and Ratliff was ordered to pay him $1,050.
Prosecutors collectively spent 2.75 hours addressing the pleading, according to the order, and requested fees at the rate of $65/hour, for a total of $178.75.
"The court has considered whether its own time spent on the pleading should be added as well and has determined that the sanction of time from both parties suffices as a reasonable and adequate sanction under Rule 11. Therefore, the court sanctions Mr. Ratliff the sum of $1,228.75," Boyce wrote.
Ratliff must make the payments within 30 days, or he could be held in contempt of court.
