BILLINGS — Federal prosecutors are asking a judge to allow as evidence statements a Montana woman made on her death bed after she was burned and beaten on the Crow Indian Reservation.
The Billings Gazette reports 20-year-old Dimarzio Sanchez, of Busby, is set to go on trial Monday on a first-degree murder charge stemming from the April 17, 2016, attack of 28-year-old Roylynn Rides Horse.
The Crow Agency woman died June 28, 2016, from injuries suffered after being beaten and set on fire. She had third-degree burns over 45 percent of her body and severe frostbite on her legs.
Sanchez’s attorneys don’t want her statements admitted as evidence, saying they don’t fit the definition of “dying declarations.”
Sanchez is the third of three defendants in the case and the only one to go to trial.