Ex-probation officer acquitted of rape

It took a jury just a little more than a hour Friday to find Stephen Mills not guilty of rape.

Judge Kathleen Bidegaray sent jurors in for deliberations just before noon, and they returned just after 1 p.m. with the acquittal.

The verdict followed an emotional summation to the jury by Mills' attorney, Jeremy Yellin, who told jurors he was going to cry no matter what the verdict was.

"Tears of joy if you acquit him, tears of sorrow if you convict," he said.

Yellin said the victim concocted the story because she was angry at Mills, a youth probation officer, for recommending that her son be placed in a group home.

"Steve Mills is not guilty," Yellin yelled out in his conclusion. Pointing to his client, he pleaded with the jury, "Send him home."

Prosecutor Joel Thompson, an assistant Montana attorney general, accused Yellin of putting the victim on trial.

Admitting that the woman's account of the incident varied, Thompson said every witness had varying accounts of what had taken place which is not unusual in an emotional situation.

But he said the differences were inconsequential compared to the fact that evidence showed Mills raped the woman.

Fellow prosecutor Ole Olson told the jurors that the case was comple, and it would have been impossible for the woman to make up the entire story.

"If she is making this up, she is a Machiavellian genius," Olson said.

Had the woman wanted to concoct a story, she would have made it more simple, Olson said.

"If she wanted to frame Steve Mills, she could have done a far better job," he said.

He asked how it was possible that Mills' DNA was found on the woman's nipple and on her neck if indeed Mills did not have sex with her.

In a statement after the incident, Mills told Havre police that he had not had sex with the woman.

Yellin countered by pointing out that the woman's version of the story changed consistently.

"She may appear as a shrinking violet," he said. "But she is calculating - and she's good, very good."