A mother's nightmare

The Idaho Supreme Court has restored Leah Meister’s faith in the justice system.

The high court last week granted a new trial for the Bonners Ferry woman’s son, David, who remains in prison for the 2001 shooting death of a 21-year-old Moscow woman.

“I thank God first and foremost,” Meister told The Herald. “The Supreme Court is highest court in state. I believe it was God’s work to clear the way for them to see the truth. For the first time, someone saw that my son got a raw deal.

The court ruled that evidence against another suspect, including at least two reports of a confession, was not heard during David Meister’s trial. Therefore, the 26-year-old was not given the chance to provide a complete defense.

Meister initially told police he had been paid $1,100 by victim Tonya Hart’s boyfriend, Jesse Linderman, to kill Hart but then recanted and has since maintained his innocence.

David Meister’s mother and attorney Thomas Whitney claim the evidence did not support David Meister’s confession.

“All the real evidence points to someone other than my son,” said Leah Meister, a customer broker associate with the United Parcel Service in Eastport. “The confession doesn’t fit the facts.”

“The thing about his confession that was most troubling is he was held in the Moscow Police Department for hours while they interrogated him,” Whitney added. “They used their methods to get him to confess and they did.”

Yet nothing was videotaped, he said.

“They could’ve recorded the entire interrogation,” Whitney said.

Tough road

The last seven years have been “absolute hell” for Leah Meister, who moved to Bonners Ferry in 1998 from Seattle after losing her 42-year-old husband, David, to cancer three years earlier.

Her son was living between Bonners Ferry and Moscow when he was accused of shooting Hart twice at point-blank range on Dec. 11, 2001, when she opened the back door of her mobile home north of Moscow.

David Meister was arrested nine months later.

“I fell to my knees out in the front yard,” Leah Meister said upon hearing the news. “It felt like when my husband died in my arms.”

Since then she feels her family has been terrorized by the judge who heard the case and prosecution.

“This has drained me emotionally and financially and actually terrorizes me,” Leah Meister said.

She has spent more than $100,000 on attorney fees and for a private investigator. Meister has taken 44, 550-mile trips to visit her son in prison in Boise.

Now she wants to focus on the positive.

“It’s the first time the judicial system displayed any fairness in seven years,” she said about the Idaho Supreme Court. “It got to see their reaction to the information that was  brushed under the rug,” she said. “They displayed fairness in their questions and reactions.”

The information

There was another suspect in the killing, according to court records. Lane Thomas was familiar with and grew up near the road where the shooter exited the field that night.

Also according to court records:

Thomas and Hart had previously been in an altercation.

Linderman told police after the shooting that Thomas was no longer allowed at the trailer he shared with Hart due to their adversarial relationship. Thomas also admitted to police that he had stolen a briefcase of marijuana which was found on the road the night of the shooting.

Thomas went to his sister’s house to sleep on her sofa the night of the shooting and she thought Thomas was lying and was involved with the shooting, according to court records.

Thomas also confessed to the murder twice.

The prosecution

Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson did not return a call to The Herald, but Whitney guesses it could be six months before David Meister gets his new trial.

Whitney and Leah Meister praised attorney Erik Lehtinen, who argued David Meister’s case before the Idaho Supreme Court.

“Erik did an extremely careful job at analyzing the law,” Whitney said. “He thoroughly researched the law.”

“Erik should be commended for his tireless efforts for writing the appeal and arguing in front of the Supreme Court,” Leah Meister added. “The trial was a circus of half truths, gossip and lies presented as evidence by the prosecution, and swallowed hook, line and sinker by the jury.”

Lehtinen said the court’s decision was a long time coming.

“This is a case that has gone on for years,” he said. “Over the last five years that I have represented him, I have gotten the opportunity to know him more on a personal level. I can’t believe he would’ve committed this crime.”

David Meister

David Meister remains in state prison in Boise, where he is respected for his leadership, his mother said. He has read close to 350 books, studied religious history and completed a paralegal course.

A native of San Mateo, Calif., Meister is an accomplished artist who wanted to purse a career in art. Beginning at about age 15, he began working in the food service industry, including at Pizza Factory in Bonners Ferry.

Meister’s preferred medium is oil painting.

“He’s an incredible artist,” Leah Meister said. “He had a promising career and was depicted as a derelict loser. My son is a very private person and he has been trashed for seven years. Trashed in the press and called a cold-blooded murderer — a psycho path.”

“If I felt he was guilty, I would still love my son and he would pay for the crime,” she continued. “They didn’t prove his guilt. They made him guilty.”