LITTLE ROCK — An Arkansas man detained for nearly a year and a half has been released from a North Dakota jail after an attempted murder charge was dropped because of a lack of evidence and witness credibility issues.
Thomas James Mashburn was set to go on trial Monday. Instead, he flew back to Arkansas on Friday morning to reunite with his wife and four daughters, the Minot Daily News reported.
Kerry Rosenquist, Mashburn’s attorney, said the physical evidence at the scene didn’t match what witnesses were saying.
“For that reason we dug and dug and dug, and the more we dug the more things didn’t add up,” Rosenquist said.
Mashburn, of Ward, had been accused of stabbing another man in the throat outside a Minot bar over the 2011 Labor Day weekend.
Sean Kasson, Ward County assistant state’s attorney, filed the motion to dismiss the charges Thursday. His motion cited lack of evidence, the interest of judicial economy, the credibility of witnesses and tampering with evidence, which came to light during trial preparation.
“Justice deserved Mashburn to be released,” Kasson said Friday. “We are satisfied that this was the right decision.”
Rosenquist said Kasson talked with one of the witnesses last week and determined that the salient facts had been fabricated and the testimony couldn’t be used.
“It’s not very often that something like this happens - that someone is totally innocent and in the eleventh hour it’s uncovered that somebody lied,” Rosenquist said.
Mashburn had been accused of stabbing Jay Rasberry in the throat with a serrated knife in the early morning hours of Sept. 5, 2011, in the parking lot of the Dakota Lounge. He spent 542 days in jail.
Asked why it has taken so long for the case to come to an end, Kasson said, “It’s an attempted murder charge. There’s a lot that goes into that.”
Arkansas, Pages 26 on 03/03/2013