Bar fight sentence protested
Staff writer
A Marion man’s Feb. 3 sentence for a Chase County bar fight is now being challenged by his lawyer.
Michael W. Sigel, Marion, pleaded guilty Oct. 15 to six counts of misdemeanor battery for a Dec. 8 fight at Doghouse Saloon in Cottonwood Falls. Charges of aggravated battery and obstruction of apprehension were dismissed.
He was sentenced to a year’s probation and ordered to serve 60 days in jail by Oct. 1 and pay $268 plus restitution. A restitution hearing set for later was canceled.
His 60 days in jail were to be served at least two days at a time. He has served approximately 30 days of that time in Marion County Jail.
In lawyer Jess Hoeme’s motion seeking to get Sigel’s sentence changed, Hoeme wrote that Sigel’s co-defendant, Chasen Gann, also pleaded guilty to battery and was sentenced to only 30 days in jail.
The judge specified that Sigel received to a longer term in jail was because he was dishonest with law enforcement and caused more harm to the victim than did Gann.
“If Sigel’s sentence for 60 days was due, in part, to his being dishonest with law enforcement, then at least Gann should have received the same disposition,” Hoeme wrote. “Sigel’s dishonesty was at the request of Gann because Gann had every intention of shifting blame to Sigel. Not only was Gann dishonest, but he was manipulative and obstructive, too.”
Hoeme also wrote that Gann, not Sigel, started the fight.
“Gann started this fight when he sucker-punched a much older gentleman because he wasn’t speaking English,” Hoeme wrote. “This is the verge of a hate crime!”
Hoeme contended that Gann struck Larry Pinkston exactly where serious bodily harm occurred.
Hoeme alleged that an affidavit written by a Chase County deputy was inaccurate and “overtly exaggerated and dramatized.”
Hoeme wrote that the deputy stood at the end of Sigel’s driveway in Marion with a scoped ruffle and asked a passerby to stick around with him because “there might be some stuff going down” and he was afraid he was going to be in a “f---ing shoot-out.”
Hoeme wrote that the deputy told a Marion County deputy that “these individuals were
freakin’ nuts,” and that he “didn’t want to get shot at.”
“Suffice it to say,” Hoeme wrote, “the deputy exhibited a great deal of confirmation bias and the allegations made in the affidavit well exceed the truth of the matter.”
Hoeme asked that Sigel’s sentence be stayed, reduced, or be served as house arrest instead.
Pinkston later filed suit against both Sigel and Gann seeking $2.5 million. The case is scheduled for trial July 7 to 9.