Medicine man sentenced for rape
Will serve 12 years in state prison

EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s the Independent’s policy not to publish the names of victims of rapes and sexual assaults. It’s also the policy not to publish details about the victim that would aid in identifying her, which was why in the original stories, the victim was only identified as a relative of the accused. But because some of the testimony that was presented Monday was based on the person’s relationship to the victim, more details had to be divulged.

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — A Navajo medicine man, being sentenced for the second time for the rape of his daughter-in-law, was given a 12-year sentence in state prison.

Herbert Yazzie Sr. had two years of the sentence suspended by District Court Judge Grant Foutz, who also ordered that after Yazzie, 55, finished his sentence, he would be on parole for 10 years.

Yazzie will be given credit for the five years he has already served in prison and will be eligible for good time as well.

He received a nine year sentence for criminal sexual penetration and three years for intimidation of a witness. Foutz ruled that he will have to serve 85 percent of the first charge, since it involved violence, while he will get a day’s credit for every day he serves on the second charge. Ultimately, that means if Yazzie has a good record, he would only have to serve about 3 1/2 more years before he could be released.

This is a case that has garnered a lot of media attention, both during the first trial as well as the second. In the first trial, Yazzie received an 18-year-sentence so the second sentencing could be considered a victory of sorts. The second trial was ordered after the Supreme Court ruled that the judge in the first case, the late Joe Rich, provided a biased statement to the jury.

Yazzie was convicted of sexually assaulting his daughter-in-law during a ceremony for the safety of her unborn child that she had asked to be conducted. She was about eight months pregnant at the time of the assault, which occurred in the spring of 2000. The victim claimed that it took her two years to get law enforcement to prosecute the case because of questions about who had jurisdiction over the land where the crime was committed.

Like the first sentencing, relatives of the victim testified that the sexual assault continues to have detrimental effects on family members seven years after it occurred.

The victim refused to appear in court, telling prosecutors that she still couldn’t stand to be in the same room as Yazzie. She did, however, write a statement which was read into the record.

“Why did you do this?” she asked in her statement. “I hate you for what you did.”

She said her life has never been the same since that day, and she does not treat her husband the same way, and she treats the child she was carrying at the time differently than her other children.

“You have ruined my life,” she said, adding that she still has nightmares. “I just want you to leave me alone.”

She said that before that day, she thought of Yazzie as a nice person who played with her children and never yelled. “I called him Dad,” she said.

Her husband also had few kind words for his father, saying that he had “screwed up” his life as well.

His son started his presentation at the podium in front of Foutz, but after less than a minute, he turned it so he faced his father and let him know how all of this has affected his life and the family, which has been divided since the charges were announced, some believing that Yazzie Sr. did not do it and others feeling he should spend a good part of what life he had remaining in jail.

His son said that some of his relatives have been after him to stop persecuting his father and they’ve been yelling at him about being in the wrong.

“I haven’t done anything,” he told his father. “You need to tell them that it was you and stop them from yelling at me and my family.”

As a result of the division in the family over this whole situation and the affect that the rape has had on his wife, he said he has been going through hell every day. “Life is not really working out for me,” he said.

“Everyone thinks you are suffering, but no one knows how I feel,” he said. “I don’t want members of your family to continue to hate me.”

Steve Seeger, Yazzie’s attorney, urged Foutz to show some leniency to his client, giving him a sentence that would require him to do no more prison time.

He pointed out that under new laws passed by the state legislature, Yazzie will have to register as a sex offender and once he does, he will be basically under house arrest for the rest of his life because “he will be limited on where he can work and limited on where he can live.”

Yazzie’s health was also something that had to be taken into consideration, he said. “His heart is not good, he is diabetic, has high blood pressure, Parkinson’s Disease and has a small tumor on his brain.”

Yazzie is also still claiming to be innocent (see separate story) and Seeger said his client’s position is that if he had done it, it would have been a “heinous crime.”