Repeat offender killed 2 near Boise. He should have been behind bars, not the wheel
Jail overcrowding, a change in state law and a change in attitudes toward how misdemeanor driving without privileges charges are handled all led up to a fatal crash in which a Caldwell man was allowed to stay out of jail and keep driving with a suspended license.
Jerry Lee Neher killed two people and himself when he crossed the center line of Highway 21 just outside Boise on a Sunday afternoon in August.
“When I saw that on the news, I was just furious,” Caldwell Police Lt. Joey Hoadley, who arrested Neher just 12 days before the fatal crash, told me in a phone interview. “It’s just very frustrating from a police standpoint. We’re just getting handcuffed by the situation at the jail. We’re so overcrowded, it’s just a revolving door at the jail.”
Hoadley has every right to be furious. The system failed, culminating in the death of two innocent people. Neher spent years and years thumbing his nose at the law, getting away time and again with driving when he wasn’t supposed to be driving. Further, results of a toxicology report sent to the Statesman Wednesday showed Neher had methamphetamine in his system.
I spent a couple of weeks going through Neher’s criminal records, reading court minutes and listening to audio of his sentencing in August. I was continually left dumbstruck and furious myself at how many times Neher got caught only to see he was back out on the streets and getting caught driving illegally again, sometimes the very next day.
A persistent reluctance to lock him up for driving without privileges pervades his criminal history.
Jail overcrowding in Canyon County
Canyon County has been trying for years to build a new jail but has been turned down by voters for bond funding four times in the past 10 years. The jail is chronically near or at capacity, and jail and court officials have said they routinely must decide who to let out before accepting new inmates.
That appears to be the case, at least in part, with Neher. His jail time in a sentencing on Aug. 6 was suspended and he was released from jail after being arrested just a week later, on Aug. 13, on three misdemeanors for possession of drug paraphernalia with intent to use, evidence destruction, and driving without privileges, all nonviolent offenses.
“They’re trying to keep nonviolent offenders out of the jail,” Hoadley said. “We’re at the point where we take ‘em in and then they walk right out. We’re trying to save jail space for violent offenders. ... It’s a difficult situation all around. If you put someone in the jail, you’ve got to let someone out, and that someone might be an even worse risk out in the community.”
But Neher, 51, was an extraordinary case, busted at least two dozen times for driving without privileges over the past 10 years, including spates of getting caught within days of each other. At one point, he had been caught six times in as many weeks in three different counties.
At the time of the fatal crash, Neher’s driver’s license was suspended through Sept. 28, 2021, for failure to obtain insurance, and he had been caught driving without privileges five times in the previous eight months, including just 12 days before the crash.
“He’s got a bunch, you aren’t kidding,” Chris Topmiller, chief criminal deputy prosecutor for Canyon County, told me in a phone interview as he looked over Neher’s online court records, clicking through one charge after another.
“This is a lot.” Click, click. “I will represent to you that this is a lot.” Click. Click. “Just glancing at this, this is many more than average.”
There’s been a shift, Topmiller said, in how the criminal justice system treats people who drive without privileges. The focus has shifted from punitive (throw the offender in jail) to compliance (keep the offender working and getting a license and insurance).
“I won’t say it’s foolproof, but it works a lot,” Topmiller said. “It works pretty well. But unfortunately, there’s always people like this gentleman, who just won’t do it. ... The instructions are very simple: Get your license reinstated, get insurance and provide it. I mean, it’s very simple. And honestly, most people will do it. The guy you’re looking at is a bit of an outlier.”
Topmiller said repeat offenses for driving without privileges used to be a felony, but the Legislature amended the law to make it a misdemeanor no matter how many repeat offenses someone has.
“Fifteen, 20 years ago, he would have been sentenced to jail, 90 days, 120 days in jail,” Topmiller said. “But there was more room in the jail back then. ... For repeat offenders, the judge would send him to jail. But I’ll tell you, those days are long gone.”
Neher’s unusually lengthy record of repeatedly ignoring the law with relative impunity, mixed in with drug charges, should have given prosecutors and judges every reason to put this man behind bars.
But for whatever reasons, the warning signs were either overlooked, missed or ignored.
An opportunity to keep Neher in jail — and off the road — for a felony parole violation was not taken just days before the fatal crash.
History of charges
Neher’s history of driving without privileges goes back to Aug. 1, 2009.
From 2009 to 2018, he had been in and out of courtrooms and jails, from Valley and Gem counties to Ada, Canyon and Owyhee counties, and in prison and on a rider program for various charges, misdemeanor and felony, including grand theft, manufacture of a controlled substance, fleeing and eluding police, battery, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a controlled substance.
Along with all those charges, he had been busted for driving without privileges at least 28 times:
2009: Aug. 1, Aug. 20, Sept. 1, Oct. 5 and Nov. 9
2010: March 4, March 7, May 29, June 1, June 7, July 27, Sept. 20, Oct. 4, Oct. 5, Oct. 14, Oct. 20 and Nov. 18. Those aren’t typos — he was cited a dozen times in one year.
2015: May 22, July 30, Aug. 12, Sept. 11, and Nov. 5. On Nov. 2, 2015, he was cited for failure to purchase or having an invalid drivers license in Canyon County.
2018: July 24. In addition, on Aug. 21 and 28, he was cited for operating without a valid drivers license, no vehicle registration and no proof of insurance in Canyon County.
2019: Jan. 20, May 13, June 14, July 3 and Aug. 13.
At varying times, his charges would be dismissed in the face of other, more serious charges or lumped in with other traffic violations.
At the time of the August crash, Neher was on parole for a felony charge of manufacturing a controlled substance, for which he was sentenced in May 2016. He served almost two years in prison before being released on parole on April 9, 2018. Three months later, his driving without privileges charges started up again.
Valley County sentence
By December 2018, Neher found himself in Valley County, being sentenced for driving without privileges.
That is a crime in which the offender has “knowledge or who has received legal notice” that his license has been revoked or suspended. In some cases, the offense is a misdemeanor; in other cases, it’s considered an infraction, similar to a speeding ticket. In most, if not all, of Neher’s cases, it was a criminal misdemeanor.
As part of Neher’s sentence in Valley County, 4th District Judge LaMont Berecz stipulated that if Neher got convicted just one more time within the next five years, he “shall be sentenced to 20 days to a year in jail.” If he got convicted of a third driving-without-privileges charge within the next five years, he “shall be sentenced” to 30 days to a year in jail.
In less than a year, Neher pleaded guilty in Canyon County to two driving-without-privileges charges. Given the stipulation in his previous sentence, you would think Neher would have gone to jail for 30 days to a year.
He didn’t.
Suspended jail time
On Jan. 20, 2019, just over a month after Neher was sentenced in Valley County, a Caldwell police officer recognized Neher driving in Caldwell in the 2007 Chevy Trailblazer. The officer turned around to pursue Neher but could not locate him. Still, the officer filed a police report, noting that Neher had a suspended license until 2021 and had previous driving without privileges convictions in 2010, 2011, 2015, 2016 and two in 2018.
A warrant was issued for Neher’s arrest. It was served on him when he was caught again on May 13 for driving without privileges.
Neher was stopped yet again and cited for driving without privileges on June 14. And on July 3. He eventually appeared in court on Aug. 6 and pleaded guilty to two counts of driving without privileges.
Third District Judge Gregory Frates sentenced Neher to 180 days in jail on one count and 30 days in jail on the other — technically fulfilling the stipulation from Valley County that Neher “shall be sentenced” to jail. But Frates suspended 176 days and 26 days of those sentences, respectively, imposing just four days in jail.
Further, instead of sending Neher to jail for those four days, Frates sentenced him to two days of work with the Canyon County Sheriff’s Inmate Labor Detail.
Frates could not be reached for comment.
“That’s a pretty standard sentence for DWP,” Topmiller said. “Judges have standard sentencing recommendations. A judge is most likely to give their standard sentence recommendation.”
In fact, it’s nearly identical to the sentence Neher received nearly 10 years earlier, in that Aug. 1, 2009, case for driving without privileges.
An audio recording of the Aug. 6, 2019, sentencing makes clear that Frates was impatient with Neher.
“I left a significant amount of time over your head,” Frates told Neher. “If you violate probation, they can still file — by driving — they can file a (probation violation). At some point, that’s nonsense. It’s not going to stop until you get it fixed.”
Based on the case numbers referenced at sentencing, Frates sentenced Neher for the January case in Caldwell and a driving without privileges charge on May 13. As part of the plea deal, Frates agreed to dismiss a driving without privileges charge from June 14.
There was no indication in the recording acknowledging the Valley County sentence. Further, there was confusion over which charges Neher was pleading guilty to, and it appears the judge and the prosecutor were unaware of a fourth charge of driving without privileges from July 3.
Just as Frates handed down the sentence, Neher’s defense attorney, listed in court records as David Delyea, said there was some confusion over case numbers, citing a case number referencing a July 3 driving without privileges charge. Frates at one point asked, “Is there a fourth (case)?” to which the defense attorney said, “I don’t think so.” Frates said he didn’t have that case number, to which the defense attorney replied, “We’ll resolve it on the back end.”
Canyon County Trial Court Administrator Doug Tyler could not be reached to answer the question about whether that issue was resolved or whether the sentence in Valley County was part of Neher’s case file at the time. It is unclear whether knowledge of the Valley County sentence or the fourth driving-without-privileges charge would have affected Neher’s sentence.
With jail time suspended, just seven days after that sentencing in Canyon County, Neher was stopped by Hoadley on Aug. 13 for failure to use his turn signal. Hoadley arrested Neher on three misdemeanor charges: driving without privileges, possession of drug paraphernalia with intent to use and evidence destruction.
That charge of driving without privileges was his fifth such charge in eight months and his fifth such charge since being sentenced in Valley County — a sentence in which the judge wrote that Neher shall be sentenced to 20 days to a year in jail if he were caught driving without privileges once within the next five years.
Neher was caught five times in eight months.
Hoadley said extra steps were taken on Aug. 13, as he took Neher directly to jail and had his truck towed. Hoadley also called Neher’s parole officer to let him know that Neher had been arrested. After that, “once we take them to jail, it’s up to the courts,” Hoadley said. “It’s out of our hands, which becomes frustrating for law enforcement.”
In Neher’s case, “from a police standpoint, we did all we could have done.”
Topmiller said it appears from the court record that Neher was given discretionary jail time for the Aug. 13 arrest, but at the most, Neher would have been kept in jail for two or three days.
Hoadley said the ideal situation would be that Neher would have been found to have violated his felony parole and be kept in jail for the parole violation.
Neher was on felony parole for the May 2016 sentence for manufacture of a controlled substance, meaning his parole officer could have issued an agent’s warrant, keeping Neher in jail until the parole commission could decide his fate, according to Topmiller. But that didn’t happen, and Neher was released after serving the discretionary jail time.
Neher’s parole officer, Vito Kelso, declined to comment.
Twelve days later, on Aug. 25, Neher was driving on that fateful, sunny Sunday afternoon near Hilltop Station on state Highway 21.
About 3:20 p.m., he crossed the center line and veered into oncoming traffic, causing a collision with a 2012 Toyota Rav 4 that killed Peter TanoRikiho, 67, and his wife, Lelelewa TanoRikiho, 60. Neher died later at the hospital.
Peter TanoRikiho was well-known to employees and customers of the Boise Co-op, where he worked for three decades. A memory board set up in the North End store became covered with comments from staff and customers.
“You were the definition of kindness and love,” one person wrote.
Said Topmiller: “There’s a subset of people who just spiral. They have multiple suspensions. They are in a sense gaming the system. This is bound to happen, unfortunately, given a lot of factors, the primary one being jail overcrowding.”
‘Very tragic’
When I asked Topmiller if something could fix the problem, he was certain of the answer.
“Yes, with a $200 million jail, yes,” he said. “Beyond that, no. Not in our current situation. I think a person with this many DWPs would do significant jail time. It’s got to be a jail issue.”
For sure, this is another wake-up call for the voters of Canyon County that they need to build a new jail.
For those who call for freeing up jail space by releasing nonviolent offenders, Neher is a prime example of why you can’t just make a blanket rule like that and expect it to work. This is what happens when you put pressure on our court system and our law enforcement to shy away from locking up people like Neher.
A new jail with plenty of space would give judges and prosecutors more leeway to send repeat offenders like Neher to jail.
Even though it would have been impossible to predict that Neher would go out and kill two people, the warning signs were loud and clear — and sustained. Even in the absence of a new jail, the public needs assurance that the court system — including the judges, prosecutors and parole and probation officers — wouldn’t let someone like Neher slip through the cracks.
Back in Valley County, Judge Berecz had caught wind of Neher’s May 13 driving without privileges charge and noted that Neher had not paid his court fines, either, triggering a probation violation and a bench warrant for Neher on June 11. Neher appeared in court on June 21 and was ordered to return to court on June 28. He was arraigned in Valley County Court on July 9, and he pleaded not guilty to the charges. A pretrial conference was scheduled for Aug. 7, the day after his sentencing in Canyon County, but that hearing was rescheduled to Oct. 2.
At the Oct. 2 hearing, Berecz noted the update in the case.
“I believe he passed away,” Berecz said, according to court minutes. “Killed two people in Boise County. Very tragic.”
This story was originally published December 8, 2019 at 6:00 AM.
