Court date is November 15, 2023
Oral arguments are scheduled to be heard in next week at the Nevada Supreme Court in the appeal filed by accused sexual predator Nathan Chasing Horse.
The “Dances with Wolves” actor and his defense team filed an appeal to Nevada’s high court in May arguing for the charges against him in Clark County to be dropped.
Chasing Horse was banished from the Fort Peck Indian Reservation after the Tribal Executive Board voted he was a threat to public safety.
Oral argument was scheduled for November 15 at 11:30 a.m. in Las Vegas. The argument should be limited to 30 minutes, per the Nevada Supreme Court’s website.
Chasing Horse, 47, is facing child sexual abuse charges on a warrant issued by the Tribal Court. He used to come to the reservation and was taken care of by local families.
The actor and accused cult leader is accused of victimizing indigenous underage girls and women for nearly two decades. Chasing Horse claimed that he was a spiritual leader and “Medicine Man.”
In January, police arrested Chasing Horse at his North Las Vegas home where he lived with several women he called wives. He is charged with 18 counts in Clark County in connection with sex crimes against two women, one of them when she was underage.
Both women said that Chasing Horse manipulated them through their spiritual beliefs.
In his appeal, Chasing Horse argued that an alleged 14-year-old victim did not testify that she said “no” to a sexual encounter.”
In the 38-page document, Clark County Public Defender Kristy Holston argued that prosecutors failed to present evidence that both women did not consent to sexual encounters. Seventeen counts in the indictment are related to the alleged long-term sexual abuse of a woman who said she was a former wife.
Holston wrote in the appeal that prosecutors presented no evidence that Chasing Horse threatened either of the women, “but rather, that Nathan’s spiritual influence created ongoing and vague concerns that spirits cause intangible harm to those who defy Nathan’s interpretation of the spirits’ demands. In other words, the state presented evidence that Nathan used grooming techniques to cause the girls to have vague concerns of negative spiritual consequences, and made promises of spiritual help, to obtain consent for sex.”
Holston had argued for all of the charges to be dismissed in Clark County District Court and previously made the same argument that there was a lack of evidence about non-consent on April 5, 2023.
As also previously argued in district court, Holston wrote in the appeal that prosecutors provided the grand jury with information about “grooming,” but that “‘grooming’ is not an element of the charged crimes.”
“The inclusion of this illegal evidence, by itself, was so inappropriate and prejudicial as to require Counts 1-18 be dismissed,” Holston wrote.
On February 22, 2023, a Nevada grand jury indicted Chasing Horse for a total of 19 counts. This included 10 counts of sexual assault against a minor under the age of 16, six counts of sexual assault, along with open and gross lewdness, first-degree kidnapping of a minor, and trafficking in a controlled substance.
In addition to the charges filed by the State of Nevada, the federal government, Fort Peck Tribes, and Canadian Indian tribes filed warrants for his arrest on related charges.
