Inkom man found guilty of eight sex crimes
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POCATELLO — A jury has found a man accused of rape and lewd conduct with a minor guilty on all counts following a two-week trial.
It took mere hours for the jury to return verdicts of guilty on two counts of rape and six counts of lewd conduct with a minor for 29-year-old Kwentin Nicholas Miller, court records show.
Miller’s trial, which began on March 19, concluded Thursday afternoon with closing arguments from special prosecutor Daniel Dinger — from the Ada County Prosecutors’ Office — and defense attorney Justin Olesen.
According to testimony from the victim, Miller began touching her sexually when she was nine years old in 2015. The touching, she said, “progressed” to “intercourse.”
In his closing arguments, Dinger said that Miller’s “grooming” began even before 2015, when he started touching the girl and pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable. Miller, Dinger said, “normalized” “sexual touching” as he built up to sexual assault and eventually rape.
Dinger repeated several times during his allotted 30 minutes that the case — and the determination of guilt — rested on whether the jury believes the victim and the “ample evidence” he said supported her claims.
Olesen told the jury to consider the same question — “Do you believe (the victim)?”
“You can’t, because her story changes,” the defense attorney said while exasperating the entirety of his 30 minutes.
Olesen said the victim, at first, never had an unkind thing to say about Miller, even during her first forensic interview after the allegations came to light in 2021.
It wasn’t until later interviews, Olesen said, when the victim repeated “rehearsed” answers given to her during a 20-minute meeting with her mother immediately preceding a second forensic interview.
He went on to question some of the terms the victim used — words like “genitals” and “intercourse,” which he insisted were not normal phrases used by teenagers. When she did tell the interviewer what occurred, Olesen added, she could not describe the first incident — which he believed would be something burned into a child’s memory.
Olesen said the victim’s parents allowed her to be alone with Miller after the allegations were first made. He asked the jury why parents would allow their daughter to be around someone who victimized her the way they described.
“I can’t fathom that,” he said.
Olesen also spoke about other witnesses who testified on behalf of the State. They were all prepared, he said, with “canned answers” for questions from the prosecutor, but were befuddled by simple questions during cross-examination, “because they hadn’t been told the answer.”
Finally, Olesen quoted John Adams, saying the former president and one of the Nation’s founding fathers believed 12 guilty men should be allowed to go free before one innocent man suffers. It is more important to protect the innocent, Olesen continued citing Adams, than it is to punish the guilty.
Dinger, during his closing remarks, said the victim’s testimony is fully believable, saying the descriptions she provided were from “lived experiences” – not something she’d heard, as the defense had suggested.
The victim, Dinger said, was withdrawn but returned to her normal “bubbly” personality after she came clean about what occurred during her second forensic interview.
He also spoke about a series of letters Miller had written to the victim, in which he referred to the girl as his “future wife.” There were also messages from the victim to Miller, saying she did not want to be part of the relationship Dinger said Miller believed he was involved in with the victim.
“I don’t want to be with you until I’m 18. I will give you a chance when I am 18,” Dinger read from the messages. … “I just want to be a normal teenager.”
After hearing instructions from District Judge Javier Gabiola and closing arguments from both sides, the jury was dismissed into deliberation around 2:30 p.m.
Guilty verdicts on all eight charges were returned hours later.
Miller will now be subject to pre-sentence investigation — including a psychosexual evaluation, to determine his threat level of reoffending. Following that investigation, and a sentence recommendation from the investigators, Miller and attorneys from both sides will reconvene for a sentencing hearing. He could face life in prison.
The victim will have one last opportunity to address Miller and the impact his crimes on her before he is sentenced by Gabiola.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Miller was found guilty of six charges — two counts of rape and four counts of lewd conduct with a minor. In actuality, Miller was convicted on eight charges — two counts of rape and six counts of lewd conduct with a minor.