Stidham sentenced in assault on husband

A Havre woman who tried to withdraw from her plea agreement will spend most of six years in custody for assaulting her husband with his own .22 caliber pistol.

Cindy Stidham, born in 1965, was sentenced in state District Court in Havre Tuesday to six years with the state Department of Corrections with four suspended and the recommendation she be screened for drug addiction and mental health issues.

The sentence was less than the 10 years with eight suspended recommended in the plea agreement and a probation officer’s recommendation for a 10-year sentence with five suspended.

District Judge Dan Boucher noted that Stidham had lived more than 40 years with no criminal history.

“Then, beginning last year, not only did the wheels fall off, you continued to drive on the rims, it seems like,” he said. “Having served 261 days now, you were out four times. I don’t know what happened. It’s a curious thing. This is not the usual history we get developed.”

Stidham pleaded no contest in February to a felony charge of assault with a weapon — she originally was arrested for charges including attempted murder — and a misdemeanor count of partner or family member assault. She also pleaded guilty to possessing methamphetamine when officers arrested her for drinking in a Havre bar in January while out on bond awaiting trial on the July 2013 charges.

Stidham was arrested four times while out on bond on the 2013 charges for violations including drinking with the victim, her husband, Randy Stidham, in violation of a no contact order. The last arrest led to the 2014 methamphetamine charge. Hill County Attorney Gina Dahl noted during a July hearing that Stidham was serving a suspended sentence on misdemeanor charges when the June 2013 assault occurred.

At a sentencing hearing April 21, Boucher, Dahl and Public Defender Thomas Schoenleben all noted that Stidham wanted a different sentence than she had agreed to in the plea agreement — she wanted a fully suspended sentence rather than the recommended 10 years with eight suspended — and that she wrote that she was dissatisfied with her defense, despite telling Boucher both that day and in February that she was satisfied.

The hearing was rescheduled, and later that week Stidham requested withdrawing her pleas made under the plea agreement.

In the July hearing, Boucher denied Stidham’s request, saying her comments that she did not understand the agreement and that she was not represented well were illogical and not credible due to her previous actions and the written comments she prepared during the presentence investigation.

When he sentenced her Tuesday, Boucher credited Stidham with 261 days served on the 2013 charges, which discharged the six-month sentence he imposed for the partner and family member assault charge.

He sentenced her to five years, all suspended, for the meth charge, to run at the same time as the other sentences. As an arrest warrant never was issued on the charges filed in January, he did not credit her with any time served against that sentence.

Boucher said her actions in the past year show she is not ready to serve probation in the community in a suspended or deferred imposition of sentence and sentencing her to Department of Corrections with the recommendation she be placed in treatment is appropriate.

“Miss Stidham, if it were not for your behavior during those periods of time I had you out, you would be done,” he said. “You’d be out. My guess is that the state wouldn’t have even sought the type of arrangement they entered into.”