Page 18 - Flathead Beacon // 12.9.15

COVER
RAUGUST
Richard Raugust is greeted by his sister, Mary Webster, and mother, Marci Jones, upon being released. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
18
“I just didn’t think it would take DECEMBER 9, 2015 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
JOURNEY to FREEDOM
Richard Raugust served more than 18 years in prison for the murder of his best friend, a cold- blooded crime he insists he didn’t commit. With his conviction overturned and his release from custody, he hopes to nally clear his name.
THOMPSON FALLS – An hour after a judge freed him from prison, Richard Raugust stepped out of the Sanders County Courthouse and into the open arms of his mother and sister, his rst embrace as a civilian in more than 18 years.
Then he clasped his arms around a new y rod.
Save for a cardboard box of belongings and a plastic documents bin, the new shing rod is a prized addition to Raugust’s few posses- sions, his stock in life pared down to the scantest of sums during the nearly two decades he’s spent incar- cerated for the murder of his best friend, a crime he insists he did not commit.
On Dec. 4, a judge released Rau- gust on his own recognizance pend- ing a new trial, a giant step in his years-long journey to clear his name.
“I knew this day would come. I just didn’t know when,” said his sister, Mary Webster, having trav- eled from her home in Oxnard, Cal- ifornia, to greet her brother. “I’m so excited for him to start anew. I know he’s ready.”
18 years,” Raugust added.
Raugust, whose 1998 convic-
tion for the murder of Joseph Tash was overturned on Nov. 16 by a dis- trict court judge, was released from prison following a bail hearing Dec. 4, and will live in an apartment in Missoula awaiting his day in court and the state’s appeal to the Mon- tana Supreme Court.
Flanked by his legal team and members of the Montana Innocence Project that is representing him – Raugust’s is the rst case to result in an overturned verdict since the non- pro t was formed in 2008 – he was choked with emotion as he described the chance for exoneration and the intense grief of being imprisoned for killing his longtime friend, who invited Raugust to Montana in 1997 to work and sh.
Raugust says that idyllic world came crashing down around him when he was wrongfully convicted of Tash’s murder.
“I was hypothetically doomed to make the best of a bad situation, per- haps for the rest of my life,” Raugust, 49, said outside the courthouse. “I will nally get to clear my name and look forward to getting closure for
BY TRISTAN SCOTT