Christopher McKinny

After a jury was unable to determine whether a Powell man raped a woman in a downtown parking lot in 2023, the prosecution and defense decided to strike a plea deal instead of trying the case for a second time.

At a January hearing in Park County District Court, Christopher S. McKinny pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of sexual battery, which was reduced from an original felony charge of first-degree sexual assault; McKinny, who is 42, acknowledged that he did not have the woman’s explicit consent to engage in sexual contact with her on that night in June 2023.

He is now completing a nine-month jail sentence.

At his April 2024 trial, McKinny had testified that the encounter was consensual and initiated by the woman while the woman testified that she didn’t know McKinny and that he had raped her while she was walking home. Both had been at a bar that night and were intoxicated.

Of the 12 local residents who sat on the jury last year, 11 were convinced of McKinny’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but one was not, being equally convinced the defendant was not guilty. The deadlock resulted in a mistrial.

The parties were set to try the case again in late January, but instead finalized a plea deal on Jan. 9.

At the hearing, District Judge Bill Simpson noted there were “two very divergent stories” in what he described as “a difficult, problematic case.” Simpson called the plea deal appropriate, but also suggested it would be helpful if McKinny wrote the woman an apology.

“I’ll consider it,” McKinny said, according to a transcript of the hearing recently reviewed by the Tribune.

“Well, it’d be helpful if you would consider it, because there’s no mystery anymore, OK?” Simpson replied, adding, “You admitted you sexually assaulted her. You admitted you didn’t have consent to do so, and when you do that, you violated someone else’s rights, physical, emotional, and it leaves a mark, usually forever.”

The judge said he hoped McKinny understood that.

“I mean, this is something you own, and you’re accountable for, and I hope you’ve learned from it,” Simpson said.

“Yes, sir,” McKinny responded.

The night in question

The woman walked into the Powell police station early one morning in June 2023, crying and distraught. She reported she’d been raped by an unknown man. That kicked off the nearly two-year-long case.

According to witness accounts, McKinny and the woman had both been at a Powell bar that night. She left the bar upset, having had a disagreement with some of the other patrons.

McKinny followed her on foot in what he described as an effort to console her.

The woman said she remembered someone attempting to console her a short distance from the bar. She said her next memory was being bent over the hood of a vehicle as someone raped her.

“I remember thinking that this couldn’t be happening and I was just terrified and I was just crying so hard,” the woman testified last year.

“I was so afraid, I couldn’t say anything,” she added. “I was just waiting for it to be done so I could leave.”

McKinny, meanwhile, testified they had consensual intercourse, saying the woman “was like more, I’d say, the aggressor, or never said in any way or fashion that would have said otherwise.”

McKinny said the woman had agreed to walk to his house, where, although he was drunk, he would get his vehicle and give her a ride to her nearby residence. McKinny said he had no intent of having sex, and that she came onto him when he stopped to urinate in a parking lot.

By both their accounts, she immediately left McKinny after the encounter, heading in the opposite direction.

“I thought it was odd, but I didn’t really know what to make out of it, so I just proceeded to go home,” he testified.

About a block away, a patron at another bar spotted the woman walking by and she was in tears; the woman told the bystander that she’d been sexually assaulted and they went together to the police station.

The woman told Powell police that she did not know the man who’d assaulted her. Investigator Chris Wallace brought McKinny in for an interview after learning that he was the last one seen with the woman that night.

When told that police were investigating a sexual assault and asked to retrace his steps, McKinny omitted any mention of the sexual encounter; he told the investigator that he “ended up walking home like I usually do.”

Prosecutors charged McKinny after his DNA sample was a match for the biological material found on the woman’s body.

Over the objection of defense — which contended the questions violated the defendant’s Fifth Amendment right to remain silent — Simpson allowed Deputy Park County Prosecuting Attorney Jack Hatfield to probe McKinny on why he never mentioned the sexual encounter to police. McKinny said he didn’t want the information to be taken out of context or misconstrued.

Closing arguments

In their closing arguments last April, Hatfield and defense attorney Tim Blatt — who represented McKinny alongside Sam Krone — spent much of their time addressing the two conflicting accounts between the defendant and the alleged victim.

“Did he [McKinny] even give you any kind of reason to explain why after this great consensual sex in a parking lot at 2-something in the morning that she just decides to go to the police station? Does that make any sense?” Hatfield asked the jury. “Of course it doesn’t. Nobody acts like that. That story is beyond incredible.”

Hatfield said the woman had no reason to lie, while he contended that McKinny was “lying like a rug because he has every reason to lie.” After the trial, Hatfield went as far as to suggest he might try prosecuting McKinny for perjury, though he did not.

As for Blatt, he sought to point out gaps in the woman’s memory and inconsistencies in her account; for example, while she testified that she’d never spoken to McKinny, another patron testified he’d seen them making small talk and playing pool together on multiple occasions.

Blatt said people sometimes make false allegations of sexual assault.

“Sometimes they make it up because they don’t know,” he said, suggesting, “this might be one of those cases.”

In his final remarks, Blatt added that a finding of “not guilty” would not be calling the woman a liar and would still allow for the possibility that “maybe he [McKinny] did do it.”

“What you’re coming back and saying is there’s no way the state has presented the kind of evidence where I’m going to take an individual, convict them of first-degree [sexual] assault and take away his liberty and freedom for the rest of his life …,” Blatt said.

A conviction would have resulted in somewhere between five and 50 years of prison time.

Jurors deliberated for a few hours on the evening of Friday, April 26, and on the morning of Monday, April 29, before announcing they were deadlocked. Simpson asked them to continue deliberating, but they soon reported that they remained stuck and the judge declared a mistrial. A juror later told the Tribune that the panel was split between 11 guilty votes and one not guilty.

‘This isn’t the outcome I’d like to see’

Immediately after the jury was dismissed, Hatfield announced his intent to retry the case, but he left the county attorney’s office last summer and his colleagues ultimately struck a deal on the reduced misdemeanor charge.

McKinny was ordered to pay $1,200 to the court and serve 275 days of jail time for the sexual battery. He’d already served 106 days following his initial 2023 arrest, leaving 169 days to serve as of Feb. 17.

Once he’s released, McKinny must serve a year of supervised probation, with conditions that include having no contact with the woman, staying out of bars and abstaining from alcohol.

Deputy Park County Prosecuting Attorney William Appleton said the agreement followed “extensive negotiation” and conversations with the victim. The woman reportedly told a victim witness coordinator that, “This isn’t the outcome I’d like to see, but I understand.”

Toward the start of the Jan. 9 hearing, Simpson said he didn’t know what happened on that night in 2023, but told McKinny that “in the future, if there’s anything like this that you ever encounter, you should run from it.”

Simpson said there can be a fine line between what a person considers to be consent, “and certainly everyone, men and women, need to be treated with respect and dignity.”