The Dino Constance Case

The jury learned nothing about the witness' poor credibility because the defense offered by court-appointed attorney Brian Walker was deficient to the point of non-existence. The "massage spying" was vilified and spun as a way to access Koncos for a murder. The prior history of massage spying was not introduced at trial, and witnesses like Lisa Parcel were never located or subpoenaed for trial.

As noted, the lack of any pretrial investigation made it impossible for Walker to impeach the witnesses with their pasts, or the secret benefits they had received from the state. And they were hugely impeachable; READ what credible people say about Michael & Jordan Spry: Declaration of Bradley Chicks, Declaration of Linda Eisele, Declaration of Gordon Jones. Jordan Spry, alone, had thirteen active arrest warrants before and during the trial, mostly for crimes of dishonesty, but this was undisclosed by the state and undiscovered by Walker.

As for Ricci Castellanos, in addition to his undisclosed/undiscovered history of unreliable informing, the deals he had been given, and his criminal background, the state knew but did not disclose that he suffered from major mental illness; to include diagnosises for hallucinations and murder ideation.

Mr. Constance insisted he take the stand to explain the true nature of the massage spying, and his conversations with Castellanos. But Mr. Walker flatly refused to prepare Constance to give testimony, so he was unable to explain. Walker insisted he was "unprepared to deal with that can of worms", but assured Mr. Constance he would nevertheless explain for him. He did not. 

This violation of Mr. Constance's right to testify was the subject of his first post-conviction motion, which became a swearing contest. Mr. Constance swore he was prevented from testifying, where Mr. Walker swore he wanted Mr. Constance to testify but Constance refused, to avoid an ineffective assistance finding and a lawsuit for malpractice.

SECRET DEALS FOR FALSE TESTIMONIES

After the absurdly short criminal trial—for which defense counsel Brian Walker did no pretrial investigation—an enormous post-conviction effort proved the extremely poor character of these men, and the many secret deals between the state and its four witnesses; They were paid off with dropped and commuted  sentences, ignored interstate arrest warrants, deferred prosecutions, special insulation from arrest, improperly quashed restraining orders; all kinds of  special treatment and even cash money!  Read story This is all proven by thousands of pages of post-conviction documentary evidence, and eight full days of complimentary post-conviction testimony.

One of the secret deals for tainted testimony against Mr. Constance involved the covert defrauding of Clark County Superior Court Judge Roger Bennett so he would erroneously quash two no-contact orders  restraining Count four witness, Zachary Brown (one of the above-noted criminals - a dangerous man with a long violent record.) This was Brown's agreed-to price for the state's sought-after testimony against Constance - a deal later verified by Brown's probation officer, and verified by several paralegals from Golik's office and by Brown himself in post-conviction testimony.

As Brown was huge, violent, and intimidating, Count four was the only plausible count.  Count four lent great believability to the entire case, and the other accusers' accusations. But post-conviction, (and after being convicted of a rape his early release enabled), Brown testified that Mr. Constance never contacted him after their initial meeting in the jail, and never so much as gave him Koncos' name. The reversal of Count Four, which was tried concurrently with the other counts, spoiled all four convictions. Yet only Count four has been reversed. 

As a result of the deal for tainted testimony, this criminal was free and unrestrained and assaulted the woman the orders were supposed to protect for a third time.   Brown then also kidnapped and raped another woman at gunpoint in neighboring Portland Oregon and this crooked prosecutor, Anthony Golik, who made the secret deal, OWNS THESE CRIMES! (His sidekick, (former) Det John O'Mara of the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, was fired for misconduct and dishonesty not long after the Constance conviction.) But Golik was elected, so he cannot be fired; something to be remembered at the next general election in 2022. FACT: in addition to malicious prosecution of an innocent man, Tony Golik sacrificed public safety and defrauded the courts all to increase his chances of becoming the next elected prosecutor. 

Although this adjudicated misconduct (Brady violations) resulted in the dismissal of Count 4, Judge  Robert Lewis saved Golik from himself by entering a false finding that the misconduct was "inadvertent." (But since three of Golik's own paralegals testified about the unique and extreme efforts they were instructed to make so as to provide Mr. Brown with his early release and dropped no-contact orders, the misconduct was clearly  NOT inadvertent. This false finding also enabled the less-than impartial Judge Robert Lewis to reverse just the one Count, instead of all four.

The fact that Mr. Golik placed a known, violent, and dangerous criminal (Zack Brown) back on the street far ahead of time, even after several recent probation violations, was the least of Mr. Golik's concerns. He recklessly pursued the tainted testimony against Mr. Constance so as to assure conviction and promote his election to office. The resulting assault on one victim and the kidnapping and rape of a second victim at gunpoint, was nothing more than mere collateral damage to Mr. Golik. READ PARTICULARS. 

Seeking only to hide his reprehensible actions, Mr. Golik never even apologized to his victims. This precipitated rape was covered up (ignored public records requests) for several months by all Clark County Offices ahead of Golik's election. The Clark County GOP seized on this issue, but because of the cover-up, the GOP learned of it too late to affect the results of the election:  Clark County Conservative.  A related huge public relations effort is being planned ahead of the 2022 prosecutor's office election, to remove Golick from office.

THE NON-EXISTENT DEFENSE

As noted, attorney Brian Walker, who's struggling private practice included just one court-appointed case per year, was woefully unprepared for trial. The original accusers, Michael & Jordan Spry (who had first conspired with Koncos to defraud the family court) were held out to the jury as an "ordained Baptist Minister" and his 'choir boy' son. They claimed they only wanted to "help," the poor downtrodden Mr. Constance, but, in fact, were horribly jealous of the successful mortgage broker, and harbored great animosity. 

They had been living off of Mr. Constance and only began to accuse him when Mr. Constance cut off the money they were expecting. The Sprys, thereafter, began to (try to) blackmail Mr. Constance. Although the jury heard two long-winded recordings of this, all copies of the blackmail recordings conveniently disappeared after trial, leaving this critical evidence lost for higher court consideration. The State, the Court, the Defense, and the Family Court all conveniently lost the recordings. 

Because defense attorney Walker failed to investigate these men, it was impossible to show that the Sprys  were, in fact, conspiring with Koncos. Perhaps more importantly, extreme impeachment evidence on the Sprys was never imparted to the jury. For example, it was discovered in Post-conviction proceedings that the "minister" had in fact been defrocked, and was shown to be highly perverse, vindictive, and life-long severe sexual predator. He was chronically unemployed, an extreme opioid addict, a thief, and a fraud who had demanded his wife perjure herself in a court proceeding where Mr. Spry was being sued for back rent. Post-conviction proceedings even admitted a Restraining Order from a neighboring county where "Minister" Spry attempted to force his helpless wife to fornicate with a dog!

The State had obtained, but failed to disclose, threatening emails from the Sprys to Mr. Constance, where they demanded money and promised his demise in court if they were not paid. The prosecution further withheld a great deal of criminal dishonesty on the part of the "Choir Boy" son Jordan (whose testimony alone put Mr. Constance behind bars for over 15 years). This included the fact that Jordan Spry had thirteen (13) warrants out for his arrest before and during the Constance trial--mostly for crimes of dishonesty. 

In post-conviction proceedings, Mr. Walker sat with and assisted prosecutor Golik, not his wrongfully convicted former client. For this reason, Mr. Walker has been called a "disgrace to the profession" by other attorneys. Mr. Constance believes that Mr. Walker "threw" the case, essentially as a campaign contribution for the favored-to-win Tony Golik; This would assure an endless supply of favorable plea bargains for the rest of Walker's ailing career. Little else (besides total negligence & incompetence) would explain the lack of investigation and the absurdly short 1½ day defense case.

Interestingly, after the Constance case, Brian Walker became a busy full-time Clark County public defender - guaranteed full-time $95/hr. billings with the county, instead of having to procure clientele for the high-end private practice he was trying to make a living at when appointed to represent Mr. Constance. Mr. Walker also made a substantial cash contribution to Golik's campaign.

POST CONVICTION

All of the above-noted exculpatory discoveries, and many more, occurred after the conviction. As noted, Mr. Constance’s first post-conviction motion for relief was based on Mr. Walker's refusal to prepare Mr. Constance to testify, which prevented him from explaining the suspicious-sounding conversation between him and star witness Ricci Castellanos. 

Brian Walker was caught perjuring himself in post-conviction testimony to avoid an ineffectiveness finding. Walker also failed to tell the jury that Mr. Constance had a history of using other people to pose as message clients, and visit Ms. Koncos to check on the welfare of his son. So when the accusers claimed massages as their access to Ms. Koncos, this appeared sinister.

Mr. Walker did not even file a Motion for Dismissal (almost automatic under Washington law) when he learned that the jail had recorded Mr. Constances' privileged conversations with him, his attorney, and had given the recordings to prosecutor Golik.

In a case like this - of words only and no overt action to establish guilt - the First Amendment requires that the jury be given an instruction to consider whether Mr. Constance’s speech (as claimed by his unreliable accusers) constituted a "true threat". No such instruction was ever given (or requested by Mr. Walker.) This and all other constitutional errors were ignored or rationalized away by the Washington State courts. 

But as noted, eight days of post-conviction evidentiary hearings followed the absured 1 1/2 day defense case. Exhibits admitted on Mr. Constance's behalf increased from only two (2) at trial, to one hundred and eighty nine (189). This evidence proves that the State committed literally dozens of grievous violations of Brady v. Maryland, involving non-disclosure of evidence that would have proven the accusers in this case were not to be believed, and raise reasonable doubt in court.

For example, as noted Count 3's Ricci Castellanos' long avoided work release sentence was dismissed for his testimony. He suffered from major mental illness including "murder ideation." The state knew all about both, and the mans' long-established history of unreliable informing for special treatment in his many petty criminal cases. But as with everything else, the state withheld and in some cases actively concealed all exculpatory evidence. 

THE FEDERAL COURT COVER-UP

This Constance case, involving literally dozens of the worst kind of constitutional violations, is so toxic to Clark County and Washington State that the State appellate court conveniently "lost" the 4,000-page post­-conviction record to keep it out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals - where that Court reverses more wrongful Washington State convictions than the entire rest of the circuit. And the trial record, which of course was not lost, was delivered to the federal courts in such terrible condition it was unreadable, making proper review impossible.

Clark County has been hammered with $43.5 million in wrongful imprisonment lawsuit settlements and judgments since 2013 and is now uninsured. This Constance case threatens to bankrupt the county and force the State of Washington to start paying for its widespread constitutional misconduct- -precisely why the record was lost in the first place.

Because of the lost and un-reviewable record, Constance has been denied his right to federal appeal of his case (habeas corpus)! For good reason, the powers that be in Washington State are so afraid of this Constance case they have tried to bury the record of it by hook or by crook, and so denied Mr. Constance a normally automatic Certificate of Appealability. Without this Certificate, Mr. Constance has been unable to file an appeal in federal court. But the record has been restored, and in November 2018 Mr. Constance filed multiple meritorious motions directly to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, seeking overdue integrity (See in" motions" section).

The first of these federal court motions (FRAP 2) describes the unlawfully squelched post-conviction record - a record it took over $300,000 and six years to build amidst very stubborn non-disclosure by Clark County officials, and absurd and unsupportable rulings from the Washington State courts.

Clark County ranks 7th in the nation (for counties with Populations over 100,000) for post-conviction exonerations. The Special Litigation Section of the U.S. Justice Dept. is now investigating Clark County's prosecutors for malicious prosecution. Neighboring Pierce County prosecutor, Mark Lindquist, is already under double indictment, and as Mr. Constance has offered his evidence to the Justice Dept., Golik may be next to be indicted because of the Constance case. (Pierce and Clark Counties are the two most notoriously lawless jurisdictions in the heavily criticized State of Washington.) Visit Corrupt Washington. Deputy prosecutors are even allowed to continue working after arrest and conviction for DUI (especially when they contribute $1,400 to Golik's campaign).

The second of these federal court motions, a petition for writ of Mandamus, asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to compel the lower district court to perfect the lost post-conviction record, and properly re-adjudicate the case. Yet somehow (probably because Mr. Constance had no lawyer) this motion was also denied. Hence Mr. Constance cannot obtain justice, or even his right to federal appeal, despite the (previously lost) overwhelming post-conviction record. 

As of November 2021, Mr. Constance has brought the many unlawful problems and deficiencies that occurred with litigation of his Habes Corpus Petition in the Federal District Court of Western Washington, directly to the Chief Judge of that court. See Motion to Reopen. 

The Ninth Circuit Court of appeals has also been made aware in a letter. What Chief Judges Ricardo Martinez and Sidney Thomas do or don't do in response to this motion and letter might be seen as integrity tests of the Federal Courts. Obviously, things like this are NOT supposed to happen. These courts have exacting legal standards and "standards of review", many of which were grievously violated here. Will the courts follow the law and the commands of the U.S. Supreme Court and correct the flawed habeas process and resulting order in this case (now that the previously "lost" record has been reconstructed), or will they continue to insulate notorious Clark County and the State of Washington, from the ramifications of the county's misconduct and judicial malfeasance?

This site will be updated as soon as the courts' responses are known.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

The crimes Mr. Constance is convicted of never existed. They were invented, perpetrated on an unsuspecting jury, and painstakingly upheld to safeguard an unfit mother's custody position, remedy an outcast police detective's failing career, indulge two low-end, dishonest attorneys with six-figure incomes the only way they might ever see them, and to protect a constitutionally abhorrent jurisdiction from financial disaster.

Through an absurd number of often deliberate constitutional violations, the life of an innocent man is being sacrificed to promote a corrupt politician. (See "final state post-conviction motion" button for listings of violations). When the corruption and the defendant's innocence later came to light, the higher state courts protected the corrupt county by concealing the record of what the government had done--thereby insulating the big money-making county from the ramifications of its corruption. The hard proof of all this (the 189 numerically denoted exhibits), all of which were "lost" for initial federal habeas corpus review, are available on this website through the links above.

The Dino Constance case represents the very worst of the American Criminal Justice System. Bedrock constitutional violations are rampant. Supreme Court decisions are pervasively ignored. Due Process collapsed at every stage. Vast evidence was covered up. And the Federal Courts have completely failed to assert themselves over the notoriously corrupt and dysfunctional Washington State courts. George Washington himself must be ashamed, and turning over in his grave!

In this case, justice was subverted and blocked simply by a lower court’s withholding (or "loss") of the record that proved the state's misconduct. This renders the constitutional protections of the accused mute and makes false conviction and imprisonment of the innocent (typically for financial gain) very easy to accomplish. This is not the American way for a state to generate revenue. But it happens all the time in Washington State! The People need to know about this, and it is the responsibility of the press to tell them!

UPDATES:

January 2019 Update: 

Mr. Constance's FRAP 2 motion could not be docketed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals because the underlying habeas corpus case was prematurely closed. (Motions can only be filed on open cases). Also, the appellate court lacks jurisdiction to make a substantive ruling until federal district court has seen all the evidence (even though it was the district court that refused to compel all the evidence that the state court unlawfully withheld.) About three years have been wasted due to the withholding, and this technicality.

May 2019 Update:

Mr. Constance filed a PETITION FOR WRIT OF MANDAMUS directly with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, asking it to ORDER the district court to lawfully perfect the previously "lost" post-conviction record of the case, as it should have THREE YEARS AGO. This is its own action with its own case number, and not a "motion" in a technical sense, so the court will be able to hear it.

The perfected record will include the 189 "Hard evidence exhibits" shown on this site, as well as 23 powerful legal briefs that introduce and explain the significance of all the evidence in those Exhibits and/or previously withheld record by the State. Both are legally required to be part of the federal court record for habeas corpus consideration by federal district court, (and represent the relevant totality of this case.) But they were lost when the Western District Court of Washington (Tacoma) conducted it's record-absent "review". Essentially, federal magistrate Karen Strombom reviewed a non-existent record (or rather, only a very small portion of the full record, that was irrelevant to the habeas corpus petition) after REFUSING to compel all RELEVANT portions.

Aided by corrupt prosecutor Golik, Clark County and Washington State are pulling every underhanded trick in the book to delay or prevent this case from ever being appealed in federal court, and inventing some new ones (like losing the record that will finally finish Prosecutor Golik.) 

The county is now confirmed to be uninsured against further misconduct- related wrongful conviction lawsuits. So should Mr. Constance also sue for damages associated with 13 years of wrongful imprisonment, (and he will; tens of millions worth), this will leave the State of Washington on the hook. Whether or not this will trickle down into state-wide improvements in Washington State's infamous criminal justice system, remains to be seen.

In any case, its no longer about "the law". The law unquestionably and absolutely requires reversal of Mr. Constance's remaining convictions, after the appeal which as been derailed. The evidence for doing so is truly overwhelming. And given what is now known about the character and motivations of the accusing witnesses, no case remains to be retried. (Besides which, a retrial would heavily publicize the fact that Golik's constitutional misconduct resulted in the brutal beating of one innocent woman and the kidnapping and rape of another - he's not likely to go there for a case he knows he will lose.) 

January 2020 Update:

The previously buried evidence and briefing that PROVES everything has been restored to the federal court record. Mr. Constance is in the process of obtaining counsel to bring this mountain of exculpatory evidence to the attention of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.