A jury of eight women and four men deliberated 11 hours before finding the 55-year-old Guill guilty of five felonies - two counts of incest, two counts of sexual intercourse without consent and one count of sexual abuse.
The counts stemmed from what the state alleged was almost a lifetime of sexual molestation and rape inflicted by Guill on his daughter, starting when she was just 6 years old and progressing over the years: from inappropriate touching at first, to attempts at sex when she was 8, repeatedly raping her since the age of 9 and ultimately forcing her to engage in three-way sex with him and his then-girlfriend when the daughter was a teenager.
He was handcuffed by Sanders County sheriff's deputies and returned to the Sanders County jail after District Court Judge Kim Christopher set sentencing for May 20.
Guill faces up to 100 years in jail and fines of up to $50,000 on each of four of the counts, and could be sentenced to life in prison on the sexual abuse charge, according to Sanders County Attorney Coleen Magera.
“Yes, we were getting nervous” as the jurors' deliberations went deeper and deeper into the afternoon, Magera said. “We're very pleased with the verdicts.”
The jury returned to the courtroom exactly 24 hours after hearing closing arguments from special prosecutor Dan Guzynski of the Montana Attorney General's Office and defense attorney Mike Sherwood of Missoula. The jurors deliberated 3 1/2 hours Monday and 7 1/2 Tuesday.
There were more than 5,000 pieces of documentary discovery introduced in the case, according to Magera, a witness list of more than 200 people from the state and the defense to be winnowed down to a manageable number, and 67 motions - 40 by the state and 27 by the defense - that led to a seven-hour motion hearing before jury selection began March 3.
Guill's ex-wife of 33 years, Candace, their son Jacob and the daughter were not in the courtroom when the verdicts were read. They had been present Monday during closing arguments.
A tearful family friend called Candace, who was with her daughter, with the news moments after Rummel read the guilty verdicts.
Sherwood declined to comment after the verdicts. Asked about a possible appeal, he said: “We've got to get to sentencing first. One thing at a time.”
Guill's daughter, now 23 and living in Sandpoint, Idaho, related a bizarre upbringing for herself and her brother outside the small Sanders County community of Heron over the years, never mind the incest allegations.
Douglas Guill refused to let his children attend public schools, she said, didn't allow them to have friends, and rarely let them leave the property on Cabinet Gorge Reservoir unless it was to do yard work at a cabin he owned in nearby Clark Fork, Idaho, or to work for his heating and air conditioning company.
He didn't pay them for the work at Advanced Systems, but told the Internal Revenue Service he did, she said - some $100,000 in wages for Jacob and his sister reported to the IRS between 2001 and 2004, according to tax records, that she said they never saw. Guill kept both a wife and a girlfriend on the property, and made them all feel that he had a special connection with God and could determine who went to heaven, and who went to hell.
His daughter said her father warned her if she ever told anyone about their sexual encounters, he would commit suicide “and it would be all my fault.”
Sherwood worked hard to dispel any notion of a cultlike existence at the Guill home at 97 Golden Pond Road. Douglas Guill testified Candace and the children were free to come and go as they pleased - and often did. He and his wife stayed together for the kids' sake after Candace allegedly had an affair with Guill's best friend almost 20 years earlier, but otherwise agreed to lead separate lives.
Candace had access to thousands of dollars in cash he kept in a safe at their Heron home, Guill said. He had even signed over power of attorney to her many years earlier, and had never revoked it until after his arrest, when Sherwood advised him to.
He said it was the children's choice to be home-schooled, and he was actually concerned that they didn't socialize with other people their own age as they grew up.
He denied ever touching his daughter inappropriately, ever attempting to have sexual intercourse with her or ever having sexual intercourse with her.
Guill said he had no clue what was going on when Sanders County Sheriff Gene Arnold and his deputies arrived on Golden Pond Road on Nov. 24, 2006 - more than two months after his daughter “ran away from home” at the age of 22 - and said he was shocked not just at his arrest.
The charges, he said, were “too absurd” to be believed.
The only possible motivation for his daughter's allegations, he said, had to be a plot cooked up by the daughter and her mother to try to kill him so that they, and not Nicole, would inherit his estate.
His daughter's sudden and unexpected departure from Heron was an attempt to cause him to have a heart attack, Guill said. He said he had suffered two strokes and a heart attack in 2005, but didn't go to the hospital because he had no insurance. He said there was no way he was going to lose everything he'd worked all his life for in order to pay medical bills.
Ultimately, Magera said, the jury had to have found the daughter's testimony more believable than Douglas Guill's.
Magera credited Guzynski - who came on board the state's team on Jan. 1 - her staff, and lead investigators Chad Cantrell and Martin Spring for the successful prosecution of the complicated case. As it unfolded, jurors heard testimony that spanned several decades and five states, painful-to-listen-to descriptions of a father's sexual advances on a young daughter, and highly emotional testimony from Douglas, Candace and the daughter.
More than anyone, Magera said, the daughter deserved most of the credit for the guilty verdicts.
“These cases really depend on the victim,” she said. “I think it was (the daughter).”
Nicole Guill, who is represented by Noel Larrivee of Missoula and is free on bail, faces three charges in connection with the case: sexual intercourse without consent, sexual intercourse without consent by accountability, and incest by accountability. All are felonies.
No trial date has been set.
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kana wrote on May 10, 2009 9:31 PM: