Reporter Super Poster
Number of posts : 241 Job/hobbies : Report the news. Registration date : 2009-08-04
| Subject: Hyden, Guilty of Attempted Murder Receives Sentence Fri Oct 16, 2009 6:09 pm | |
| Chris Hyden received Life Imprisonment without parole
A man convicted last summer for attacking a Clinton woman and her then 6-yearold daughter with a knife and raping the girl has been sentenced Friday to life in prison without possibility of release.
Judge Michael Thomp-son found Christopher Hyden, 29, of Clinton, Minn., guilty of first degree criminal sexual conduct for raping the girl during the attacks which took place on Aug. 1 last year in Clinton. Hyden was also found guilty of second degree attempted murder for slashing the girl’s throat after the sexual assault and first and second degree attempted murder for stabbing ad slashing the throat of her mother, 2 7 - y e a r - o l d Dawn Boyle.
He was acquitted of attempted first degree murder involving the daughter. The c o nv i c t i o n s came Aug. 26 after five days of testimony and closing arguments during a court trial in Big Stone County Court in Ortonville.
Big Stone County Attorney Bill Watson and Assistant Attorney General Matthew Frank prosecuted the case and argued the attacks included heinous acts involving the rape of the girl creating the possibility for a greater sentence upon conviction. In convicting Hyden, the judge agreed there were two heinous elements in the sexual assault — intentionally inflicting great bodily harm and exposing her to extreme inhumane conditions.
Those findings created a situation where Hyden faced a sentence of life in prison without the chance for parole, something Watson said at the time “would be the presumptive sentence.”
Evidence presented during Hyden’s trial showed the defendant was a person familiar to the mother and her children and often took the children for rides on an ATV.
On the afternoon of Aug. 1, 2008, Hyden came to Boyle’s home and took her young son for a ride on the vehicle. When he returned a short time later, the daughter asked for a ride.
Testimony indicated Hyden admitted to taking the girl on the ATV to the Big Stone Count Fairgrounds on the edge of Clinton. There he took the child to a secluded area at the rear of the race track, raped her, slit her throat with a knife and left her lying there.
She was able to walk to a nearby home where the resident put her in his vehicle and took her for help. After leaving the fairgrounds, Hyden returned to Boyle’s home and, after a brief conversation in which he said the daughter was outside the house playing, began attacking the mother with the knife.
The woman had her throat slit twice and was stabbed at least four times in the abdomen. She and her daughter were taken to a Fargo, N.D., hospital for treatment and the girl was then airlifted to a Minneapolis area hospital for further surgery.
Among witnesses testifying during the trial were several people who were leaving a church gathering nearby the woman’s home and heard her screams for help after she ran from the house. They testified seeing Hyden fleeing on the ATV.
Hyden drove the vehicle north out of Clinton and attempted to hide in a cornfield near Graceville. He surrendered to authorities a couple of hours later after the field was surrounded.
Law enforcement officers who interviewed Hyden following his arrest testified he admitted raping the girl and to the attacks.
Later, Hyden said he had heard voices directing him to make the attacks, but also made statements indicating he was angered at the time over pending charges against him relating to an alleged sexual assault of another child earlier in 2008.
He was quoted as saying, “You get what you ask for,” and “If they want a monster, I’ll give them one,” preceeding the attacks and after his arrest.
Hyden and his lawyers, Kent Marshall and Tim Johnson, never denied Hyden committed the crimes and the defendant did not take the stand during his trial.
He has been held in the Kandiyohi County Jail since his arrest. It has not been decided in which prison Hyden will serve out his sentence, Watson said. | |
|