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Food bank needs: Beans, Rice, Canned Beans, Ramon Noodles & Soup. Only items that have not expired please.

Anyone wanting to donate to the food bank can drop off items at the Sidney Herald

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wednesdAYOCT. 2, 2013105th year, No. 79Sidney, Montanawww.sidneyherald.com75 Cents

Gas company aims to reduce flaring. Page 11A.

serving richland county and the surrounding area for 105 years

Bulletin BoardKiwanis fruit is in

People who have ordered apples or pears from the Sid-ney Kiwanis Club can pick the fruit up from 10 a.m to 4 p.m. Saturday or 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at the Johnson Hardware warehouse. You can also pick up the fruit at the Johnson Hardware store next week.

Welcome home troopsA welcome home dinner

for the local National Guard is 6 p.m. Saturday at the VFW Post.

Kids carnivalThe Kids 1st! Carnival is

10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Oct. 26 at the Richland County Fair Event Center. Entrance fee is $1. Tickets will be sold at the event for 25 cents each. All proceeds benefit commu-nity organizations running booths. Vendors are needed. Call Elaine Stedman, 480-5719, for more information.

Fall dinnerSt. Matthew’s Catholic

Church will have its fall din-ner on Oct. 20 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at St. Matthew’s Parish Center. The meal will include turkey and dress-ing with all the trimmings and homemade pie. Cost is $10 for adults and $30 for families.

Happy birthdaysThe Sidney Herald wishes

happy birthday this week to friends Kami Kalberer, Sylvia Casares, Janae Finnicum, Sarah Miche, Marissa Eberling, Patty Olesen, Tami Jo Berger, Marlys Dynneson, Jen-nifer Sifers-Morken, Me-lissa Quilling, Chris Thiel, Krista Steinbeisser, Maria D’Angelo-Jensen, Tracy Sundheim, Stacey Collins, Mitch Kallevig, Ashleigh McGhee, Loretta Berry, Kerry Reitz, Sally Selensky, Logan Peterson, Dustin Renders, Jeff Van Der Weele, Matthew Strasheim, Rachelle Ellis, Heather Wagner Nevins, Roxann Roth, Matthew Helmers, Hailey Steinbeisser, Joey Barsotti, Amanda Valnes, Justin Bieber, Michelle Jen-sen, Haelee Spaabeck, Heidi Berglund, Cooper McGloth-lin, Christina Quigley, Kali Zadow, Kimberly Leland and Brooke Schmitt.

Scary storiesThe Sidney Herald will

hold a scary story contest for this Halloween season.

Children are urged to sub-mit their stories to editor@sidneyherald.com. You can also drop off the story at the Herald’s office.

deathsJason Tilson Burgess, 87Gary L. Habedank, 69Aubrey Rae Lantta, 33

Pam Unterseher, 57Page 3A

InsideAround Town .....2AClassifieds .......4-7BDeaths ...............3ADial an Expert . .8B

NIE. ...................6AOil report ...........5AOpinion ............10ASports . . . ..... .1-3B

Bill vander Weele | sidney herald

Big fans of the WarriorsFairview’s kindergarten students cheer during the homecoming parade held Friday afternoon.

By BiLL VAndeR WeeLesidney herald

Two hearing dates for Mi-chael Spell, one of the two men charged with kidnap-ping and murdering Sidney teacher Sherry Arnold, have been scheduled by District Judge Richard Simonton.

A hearing at 9 a.m. on Nov. 4 in Sidney has been designated to cover the “At-kins Motion.” The motion deals with stating that the death penalty for mentally retarded individuals is cruel

and unusual punishment. Written arguments by both the Defense and the State re-garding the matter have been sealed.

Other matters, such as a change of venue and whether Spell’s statement to police should be suppressed, are sched-uled to be heard during a hearing starting at 9 a.m.

Oct. 24.The Defense has stressed

that a change of venue is required because it is not possible to have a fair and impartial jury in Richland County. A survey conducted by Dr. Richard Seltzer, political science professor at Howard University, is being utilized in the request to show that an impartial jury is not possible in Richland County.

Survey results show that 97.5 percent of respondents in the Seventh Judicial

District have heard about the case. Of those, 79 per-cent felt Spell is guilty. The survey was conducted from April 15 to May 2.

“This case involves such extreme circumstances that an impartial jury cannot be seated in light of the pretrial publicity,” the docu-ment reads.

In the Defense’s argument, it noted that two Richland County commissioners provided comment before the Montana House Judi-ciary Committee in support

of the death penalty on Feb. 14. One commissioner testi-fied, “it would be a blow to the community if the death penalty was reversed.”

In the State’s opposition, the State suggested Dawson County or Custer County as possible venues for the trial if the court determined the jury pool in Richland County is too contaminated. The Defense proposed hav-ing the trial in Bozeman.

The State argued what

Spell

Two hearing dates in Sidney scheduled for Spell case

By BiLL VAndeR WeeLesidney herald

When Pastor Jordan Hall, Fellow-ship Church, researched to find a Catechism for his Baptist congrega-tion, he became a little frustrated. There was only one of that type a book to purchase.

When copies of the Catechism were reprinted locally, the church was then experiencing an expense. The Sidney pastor took matters into his own hands. The result is the book, “A Baptist Catechism,” written by Hall.

Although many people associate Ca-thechism with Catholics and Luther-ans, Hall said actually Baptists have used Catechisms for about 400 years before stopping 70 years ago because they began to lose interest and focus on the importance of doctrine.

Hall explained that when he started to really study the Bible deeply, he studied the Westminister Catechism and the Heidelberg Catechism. He has used information from both of these materials for his education.

“The purpose of the Catechism is to teach and specifically to teach doc-trine,” Hall said.

When writing his book, he took the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 and British Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon’s edited version and translated them to mod-

ern English. In the second half of the book, Hall translated the Catechism by the Charleston Association of 1813 into modern English.

Hall noted the task was a lot more complication than changing the “thees” and “thous.” The word “con-versation” had to be changed to “life-style,” for example, because certain words have changed meaning over the last several hundred years.

“It was going line by line and put-ting it into modern English,” Hall, who said it took about a half year to complete the book, added. “No one has really put it into modern English.”

In the second part of the book, Hall wrote an original essay, “Modern Day Downgrade,” where he compares theological shallowness in 1800’s Great Britain, written about by Charles Spurgeon in an article he titled, “The Downgrade” to the current day. Hall noted the point of the essay is the importance of teaching Catechism to our children.

He stresses parents, not only the church, have the responsibility of teaching catechism to children. He notes 80 percent of 18 year olds leave

Religious authorsidney pastor writes books for catechism instruction

Bill vander Weele | sidney herald

Pastor Jordan Hall shows his book, “A Baptist Catechism.”

See SPeLL, page 11a

By SUSAn MinicHieLLosidney herald

The District Court in Richland County is having a busy year so far with a rise in criminal processing and oil activity affecting probate files.

In 2012, there were 77 felonies in Richland County. The number of felonies this year has already surpassed last year with 79 felonies as of September.

“There’s more people here. Our population has changed and with that comes this,” Janice Klempel, clerk of the District Court, said.

Felonies in Richland County include a mix of fourth offense or subsequent DUIs, criminal possession of dangerous drugs, criminal possession of drug parapher-nalia, among other charges.

The age and gender of the people convicted of felonies have a vast range.

Once convicted and sen-tenced, felons are usually incarcerated outside of the county at the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge or the Montana Women’s Prison in Billings. The Richland County Law and Justice Center has experienced an overflow of inmates in the last two years.

“It’s not just our criminal cases that keep us busy,” Klempel said. “Our probates went up in numbers this year, too.”

Klempel said the rise in probate files processed in the District Court is “not necessarily caused by more deaths.” Oil companies com-ing to the Bakken interested in leasing out royalties or minerals on a property are sometimes halted if an estate is still in a descedent person’s name

“The oil activity is requir-ing an order, if there’s any minerals or royalty interest in their property then there has to be a probate. And if there wasn’t, then the at-torneys have to file them,” Klempel said.

District court follows cases based on information filed and prosecuted by the county attorney’s office. Probates, felonies, civil cases and family law are some types of files processed by the District Court.

“With the increase in num-bers of people, it’s definitely made a change in our office up here,” Klempel said.

feloniesincreasein county

See HALL, page 11a