Media Coverage

North Dakota: Man convicted in fair brawl turned down lighter sentence
A man convicted in a Red River Valley Fair brawl rejected an offer from prosecutors for a lighter sentence after a juror who convicted him said she had a change of heart.

Mevludin Hidanovic, a self-employed scrap metal dealer, is serving an 18-month prison sentence after being convicted in January of engaging in a riot while armed.

Juror Becky Rettig filed an affidavit claiming she persuaded other jurors to convict Hidanovic based on her bad experiences with Bosnians.

The affidavit led prosecutor Mark Boening last week to offer to reduce Hidanovic's prison sentence to 60 days if he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor menacing charge. The earlier conviction from the trial would be erased from his record.

Hidanovic, in an interview with The Forum from the Cass County Jail on Tuesday, said he turned down the offer.

"I don't want to take that for something I didn't do," he said.

Hidanovic, who arrived in Fargo from Bosnia in 1999, fears deportation unless the conviction is reversed.

A hearing is scheduled April 5 on his request for a new trial.

Court records show Hidanovic pleaded guilty in February to a menacing charge for a fight outside the West Fargo VFW last May, about a month before the Red River Valley Fair fight.

A woman accused Hidanovic of dragging her by the hair and kicking her in the stomach.

He said he was breaking up a fight and did not hit her.

The woman Hidanovic married last year, Chanda Thomte, told police in 2004 that Hidanovic beat her, threatened to kill her and her father, ordered other Bosnian men to follow her and attempted to push her car into oncoming traffic with his BMW. Officers reported bruises, cuts and swelling to her eye, jaw, arms and legs.

"She also has informed me that she would recant any statement she gives to me for fear that she would be in danger or her parents would be in danger," Officer Julie Hinkel wrote in a June 21, 2004, report.

She attributed the couple's problems to the inability to communicate and understand differences in their cultures. Counseling helped them work through problems, she said.

After his trial, his wife said a polygraph proved her husband's innocence. Three days later, the Bosnian community turned over $50,000 cash to free him from jail until sentencing.

At a Feb. 26 hearing, East Central District Judge Wade Webb ordered

Hidanovic to spend 18 months in prison. Rettig's affidavit was filed two days later.

"He should not be guilty of those charges," Rettig said Tuesday. "No, I'm not threatened. I haven't been bribed. I just had a change of heart."

Boening said he plans to oppose a new trial for Hidanovic. He said prosecutors may seek to cross-examine Rettig.

"I've never been involved in a case like this before," the prosecutor said.