Estherville, Iowa — The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled in the case of an Estherville man convicted of 2nd Degree Murder back in 2015.
Lee Samuel Christensen was tried in June 2016 for the murder of 19-year old Thomas Bortvit. Both men were from Estherville. Prosecutors say the killing happened after Bortvit began dating Christensen’s former girlfriend, a woman with whom Christensen wanted to rekindle a romance. The investigation into Borvit’s shooting death led to a charge of 1st Degree Murder against Christensen, who was found and arrested at the Minneapolis airport the day after Bortvit’s body was found. Jury deliberations lasted for more than a day before jurors returned with a verdict finding Christensen guilty of 2nd Degree Murder.
Christensen asked for a new trial based upon the trial court’s refusal to disqualify a juror who had allegedly made out-of-court statements regarding Christensen’s guilt, prosecutorial misconduct related to allegedly improper testimony from two of the state’s witnesses, and misconduct and bias related to a social media post that reached the jury about a possible riot if Christensen weren’t convicted.
The Iowa Court of Appeals heard Christensen’s case, and reversed the trial court, saying Christensen was entitled to a new trial as a result of juror misconduct and bias.
Prosecutors then appealed the decision of the Court of Appeals to the Iowa Supreme Court, which released their 71-page ruling in the case Friday morning. In its ruling the court stated that Christensen failed to show a reasonable probability that the verdict of the jury would have been different if the extraneous influence did not reach the jury in this case. The high court said the threat of a riot reported to the juror and the jury was vague, was not directed at any juror, and was merely a hearsay statement about what purportedly appeared in social media. They added a reasonable juror knows that a wide variety of vacuous claims and statements may appear on social media without the slightest veracity. In addition, they said there was no objective support for the threat of a riot in the record except the vague hearsay report of a Facebook comment.
The Iowa Supreme Court upheld the District Court’s guilty verdict, as well as the imposed sentence of 50-years in prison that was handed down to Christensen. In doing so, they reversed the decision of the Iowa Court of Appeals.
