Missoula

by Jon Krakauer

  There’s no one in the state more qualified to serve on the Board of Regents than Pat Williams. He has spent a lifetime in service to public education and was defending the Constitution, including the rights of the accused, at some political cost, long before most of his detractors took any interest in the criminal justice system. To think his appointment could be derailed over comments that were both honest and long overdue, though, would suggest one miscalculation on Pat Williams’ part—his belief that most Montanans appreciate “straight talk.”

  In 2012, Governor Brian Schweitzer nominated Williams to the Montana Board of Regents of Higher Education, to a term due to expire in 2019, but the nomination required confirmation by the state senate. On March 20, 2013, the Montana Senate Education Committee held a confirmation hearing on Williams’s nomination, and most of the hearing was spent debating Williams’s comments to the Times. Jim Foley, who had been forced to resign as UM’s vice president for external relations after playing a controversial role in the university’s rape scandal, and had served as Williams’s staff director when Williams was a U.S. congressman, argued against Williams’s confirmation. His former boss’s published statements, Foley fulminated, “were callous and injurious, both to the citizens of this state and to the thousands of UM student-athletes and UM alumni around this country….Enough is enough with this name-calling against young men who in most cases can’t defend themselves against words.”

  On April 4, the Montana Senate voted on Pat Williams’s confirmation. The tally was 26–23 to reject his nomination, and he was ousted from the Board of Regents.

  —

  TEN DAYS AFTER the Jordan Johnson trial ended, Allison Huguet was at her father’s house in Missoula, watching the five o’clock news, when she learned from a report broadcast by the local NBC affiliate that Beau Donaldson had asked the Sentence Review Division of the Montana Supreme Court to reconsider the sentence he’d received for raping her.

  Huguet was astounded. To avoid a jury trial, and a possible sentence of up to one hundred years in prison, in September 2012 Donaldson had signed a plea deal with the state of Montana in which he agreed to plead guilty to raping Huguet in return for a guarantee that he would be sentenced to no more than ten years at the state prison. The deal also included a condition that unambiguously stated, “By signing below and accepting the benefit of this agreement the Defendant expressly waives any right to appeal….Defendant further waives any right…to make application for sentence review.”

  The state had held up its end of the bargain on January 11, 2013, when Judge Karen Townsend sentenced Beau Donaldson to ten years at the state prison. Yet Donaldson was now trying to rescind his promise not to appeal his sentence to the supreme court.

  The Sentence Review Division, consisting of three judges, nevertheless agreed to hold a hearing to reconsider Donaldson’s sentence. These judges could decide to reduce his sentence. But they could also decide to increase it, so requesting the review was not without risk. Milt Datsopoulos, Donaldson’s lawyer, said Donaldson was willing to take that risk because “we felt so strongly” that the sentence was “clearly excessive.”

  The hearing to review the sentence was held on May 2, 2013, in a small room inside the Montana State Prison at Deer Lodge, where Beau Donaldson was incarcerated. Milt Datsopoulos addressed the court first. He felt the sentence was excessive because of Judge Townsend’s “failure to provide the option of a sentence to the Department of Corrections rather than a sentence directly to the Montana State Prison.”

  Datsopoulos argued that the sentence imposed hadn’t been balanced with the need to rehabilitate Donaldson, to help prevent him from becoming a recidivist. “Unlike a lot of star athletes,” Datsopoulos told the court, Donaldson “was a good student….He was a person of value, substance, ability, and was no threat to the community.” Were it not for alcohol, he insisted, “this young man wouldn’t be in prison. His whole life is, almost, pristine….Incarcerating Donaldson in the state prison wasn’t necessary,” Datsopoulos maintained, saying that it was “avoidable” by letting him serve his time at the Department of Corrections instead.

  Following Datsopoulos, Beau Donaldson told the court, “I do take responsibility for the actions that I’ve done…and the hurt that I’ve caused. And, I just feel that if I can get the opportunity to be sentenced to the Department of Corrections, I can not only rehabilitate myself, but make myself a better person.”

  Donaldson’s mother, Cathy, testified that Beau “has always been a good person….He was raised that way….Yes, he does need to be punished. But he also needs a chance. He was just shy of twenty-one years old when he made a very, very bad decision….When my son puts his mind to something, he will do it. His goal is to have a life. My goal for him is finish his college education, find happiness, get married, have children, be a wonderful father. I am not as young as I would like to be. But I would like to be able to be alive to see that. I plead and pray that you have read and looked at everything, and you have open eyes and an open heart. Because there’s a plate missing at my dinner table, and I want it back.”

  Cathy Donaldson told the three judges that Beau’s “sentence is our sentence. I’m selfish. I want to see him in a program where he can get the help that he needs. I don’t want to see him sitting in a cell and not getting the opportunity that he deserves.”

  Larry Donaldson, Beau’s father, asserted to the court that Beau “is the only person that’s been totally honest from day one….He’s never varied from the truth.” When Beau called Larry from jail to say he’d been arrested, Larry said, “He told me, ‘If I did something wrong, Dad, I need to take responsibility.’…He’s a big part of a lot of people’s lives. Just give him a chance….I love you, Beau.”

  —

  WHEN IT WAS her turn to testify, Allison Huguet began by explaining that she “came today not because I want to be here, at all.” Then she turned toward Beau Donaldson and, choking up with emotion, said, “Listening to your mom breaks my heart.” Immediately thereafter, her voice hardened, however, and she told the judges that Larry Donaldson’s claim that Beau “is the only one that’s been honest” was not only untrue but “a complete slap in the face.” After Beau Donaldson’s arrest, Huguet pointed out, he lied to numerous people, saying that she had consented to have sex with him on the night he’d raped her and falsely claiming that she’d had consensual sex with him on other occasions before the night he raped her.

  Huguet was infuriated by Milt Datsopoulos’s statement that requiring Beau to serve his sentence in the state prison was “avoidable.” She said, “Well, raping me was also avoidable. And it’s a choice he made.” She observed that Donaldson could have requested a trial but chose to make a plea deal instead. “I cannot understand why Beau even has the right to ask for a review of his sentence,” she said, after he’d explicitly agreed to waive that right in the plea deal.

  Datsopoulos, Huguet reminded the court, claimed Beau’s “life had been pristine,” because his criminal record listed no serious prior offenses. “However,” she said, “if you looked at all the facts in this case, you will see that Beau absolutely has a lot of past criminal behavior.” She noted that Donaldson had admitted to underage drinking; lying to the police; illegally obtaining and using Adderall, painkillers, and cocaine; and disorderly conduct charges that had landed him in jail the weekend before he was arrested for raping her. Moreover, Donaldson had sexually assaulted Hillary McLaughlin.

  “While Beau may not have been charged for…these acts, some of which are felonies,” Huguet continued, “it does not take away from the fact that these crimes had very serious effects on others. It is clear that Beau has gotten away with a lot during his short twenty-three years of life. And it worries me that if this sentence is reduced, he will once again be sent the message that his actions are acceptable.” Milt Datsopoulos, she said, brought up Donaldson’s “age and potential” as a reason why sentencing him to the state prison was excessive. The only potential Huguet
saw in Beau Donaldson, she noted, “was a potential for hurting a lot of females. Being a young and charming football player, Beau had—and I’m sure still would have—a very large victim pool.”

  Allison Huguet said, “As we grow up, we are taught to stay away from strangers and creepy people in the alleyways,…and not to go anywhere without someone you trust. [But] what happens when it’s the person you trust who rapes you?…I’m tired of living in this hell.”

  Her family had been forced to suffer the hell of the rape’s aftermath, too, she explained: “My mother, specifically, is not here today because she, emotionally, can’t handle any more of it. She can’t even look at me without having flashbacks of picking me up in the middle of the road that night. Or hear my voice without being reminded of my screams for help, or telling her that Beau had just raped me and was chasing me down an alleyway.”

  If Beau Donaldson “was truly remorseful, and understood the pain and damage he has caused,” Allison Huguet said, “he would know he deserves the sentence he has been given, and then some. He would take responsibility for his actions all of the time” and not just while trying to get his sentence reduced. “He would not allow his friends and family to blame me or slander my character for what he has done,” she continued. “I’m deeply frustrated by the fact that he thinks he deserves this [sentence] review….I don’t get to go to a review board and ask them to reduce the pain I feel daily; or take away the flashbacks, nightmares, or anxiety; or restore my sense of safety and security, or my trust in people. I don’t get to ask them to give me back my innocence or joy, or the life that he has sucked right out of me. And, somehow, he thinks he’s the one that’s been punished too harshly?”

  Weeping, Huguet told the judges, “The night that Beau chose to wait until I was alone, asleep and defenseless, walk over to me, pull down my pants, pull down my underwear, pull down his pants, pull out his dick, and shove it into me, he gave me a life sentence—a life in which I have to work every day to get through the pain. Some days I have to convince myself it is even worth it. I don’t get to go to a review board and ask them to reduce the life sentence he has forced on me. There is a reason why people say that rape is the worst crime a person can survive.”

  Allison Huguet said she wanted Beau Donaldson “to get help and treatment. But at the end of the day, he has to be punished. And the only thing that is excessive in this case is the amount of suffering that Beau has caused.”

  When Huguet finished, Hillary McLaughlin addressed the Sentence Review Division via a video feed from Great Falls. “To hear that Beau Donaldson wants a lighter sentence for sexually assaulting a stranger and raping a lifelong friend is extremely hard for me to understand,” she told the judges, and then she described Donaldson’s attempt to rape her in 2008. Afterward, McLaughlin explained, instead of reporting it to the police, she tried to put the incident “in the back of my mind and just forget about it,” without success.

  “Due to Beau Donaldson,” she said, “I have lost my sense of comfort with nearly every person I meet. I have lost who I was before I met him. I live in constant fear of being attacked at any moment….I am constantly looking over my shoulder. I had never experienced anxiety, but now I am treated daily for it. I get nervous, anxious, and scared at any given moment….I struggle with being alone in my own home. And as a twenty-three-year-old woman, I am afraid of the dark. I wake up with nightmares of being attacked, and I’m up for hours on end because I can’t get these visions out of my head. Even while I was screaming and telling him to get off me, he continued to try and sexually assault me….I am stuck living and remembering this feeling for the rest of my life. I am stuck with fear, anger, hurt, nervousness, and anxiety.”

  Like Allison Huguet, Hillary McLaughlin was appalled that Donaldson was claiming that his sentence was unfairly harsh. “I think he got off easy,” McLaughlin declared to the court, “and I hope by telling my story, you realize that his maximum sentence of ten years is temporary, but mine is forever.”

  —

  MISSOULA COUNTY ATTORNEY Fred Van Valkenburg had accompanied Huguet to Deer Lodge, and after McLaughlin completed her testimony, he addressed the panel of judges. “I’d like to begin,” he said, “by telling you a couple of things about the two witnesses you’ve just heard from.” When Missoula police and prosecutors first learned that Donaldson had assaulted Hillary McLaughlin, Van Valkenburg explained, she was “initially very reluctant to get involved in the prosecution.” But she came to understand “that silence was essentially acting as approval for Beau Donaldson’s actions,” and although it was difficult and unpleasant to testify at his sentencing hearing, she felt it was “a duty on her part to try and protect future victims.”

  As for Allison Huguet, Van Valkenburg said, the morning after Donaldson raped Huguet, she told him she would not report him to the police if he would seek counseling, treatment for his drug and alcohol abuse, and sex-offender treatment. During the fourteen months following the rape, however, “it became increasingly clear to Allison that Beau had no real intention of keeping those promises to her.” Instead, Donaldson continued “to drink, to take drugs, to party, to laugh in her face when he saw her.”

  Around this same time, Van Valkenburg told the court, the Missoulian published several articles quoting anonymous women who said they had been raped by football players from the University of Montana. “Allison began to think, ‘My God, Beau Donaldson is out there raping other women because I failed to report the case involving him,’ ” Van Valkenburg explained. So she went to the police and reported that he’d raped her, resulting in his arrest. Subsequently, Donaldson entered into a formal plea agreement with the state, and the agreement had a provision that said, “The Defendant expressly waives any right to appeal” or ask to have his sentence reviewed. “Yet,” Van Valkenburg lamented, “here he is at sentence review….The court should take that into consideration.” The sentence Donaldson received is “reasonable under the circumstances,” Van Valkenburg observed, and “Judge Townsend thought long and hard” before imposing it.

  The state, Van Valkenburg pointed out, “had a strong case against Beau Donaldson because of his tape-recorded confession. There wasn’t really much reason for us to negotiate with the defense, at all. But we did, because, to some degree,…any time you go to a jury trial, it’s a roll of the dice.” It took a long time for Van Valkenburg’s office to convince Allison Huguet to support the plea deal proposed by the state, because she thought thirty years in prison with twenty suspended was too light a sentence, he said. “But one of the things we told her was” that if this sentence is imposed, “it won’t get set aside later on, on an appeal or by a sentence review panel.”

  Beau Donaldson “has, essentially, put himself in the situation that he’s in right now,” Fred Van Valkenburg said. “But he’s done more than that. He’s given a horrible black eye to something that is a source of tremendous pride to the people of Montana: the University of Montana football program…and the University of Montana, in general….Enrollment is way down. The university has a budget shortfall of $16 million this year. That’s going to affect every student at the University of Montana.” And Donaldson, he asserted, “is one of the people principally responsible for that.

  “Judge Townsend is a thoughtful, reasoned jurist,” Van Valkenburg continued. “She imposed a reasonable sentence on this defendant. And I would respectfully ask you to uphold this sentence.” Van Valkenburg paused for a moment, then added, “And I will tell you, it’s a little tempting to ask for a [slightly stiffer sentence], but I won’t. I will just ask that you uphold the sentence that Judge Townsend imposed. Thank you.”

  At this point, one of the three judges scolded Milt Datsopoulos for promising that if the sentence imposed by Judge Townsend fell within the parameters of the plea agreement—as it in fact did—he would “not put the victim through any further proceedings, appeals, sentence review, or otherwise.” So, this judge demanded, how did Datsopoulos explain his request
for a sentence review?

  Datsopoulos answered that he felt Beau Donaldson deserved a new sentence because the plea agreement was “coercive.”

  This was a preposterous assertion. Nobody had forced Beau Donaldson to take a plea deal. Nothing had prevented him from going to trial and having his future decided by a jury of his peers.

  In Missoula, Grizzly football exists in a realm apart, where there is a pervasive sense of entitlement. University of Montana fans, coaches, players, and their lawyers expect, and often receive, special dispensation. Datsopoulos had built a thriving law practice in this environment, and he appeared to believe that his client’s pledge not to appeal his sentence wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. Because Beau Donaldson was on the football team, the promise shouldn’t apply.

  None of the three judges appointed to the Sentence Review Division by the Montana Supreme Court was from Missoula, however. When it became clear to Datsopoulos that they weren’t impressed by his claim that Donaldson had been coerced into making a plea deal, he tried a final, desperate maneuver. He attempted to convince the judges that Donaldson deserved a lighter sentence because when he’d confessed to raping Huguet at the time of his arrest, he’d knowingly done so without a lawyer present, thereby “eliminating the potential” for Datsopoulos to mount an effective defense. This voluntary confession, Datsopoulos argued, proved that Beau Donaldson accepted responsibility for his crime and wanted to make things right.

  Maybe. But on the day Donaldson was arrested, when he went to the police station and gave his statement to Detective Guy Baker, Baker had just informed Donaldson that he’d secretly recorded Donaldson’s phone confession to Huguet, so Donaldson was already aware that the police knew the truth.