Nichole Rice

GRAND FORKS – A Grand Forks jury found Nichole Rice not guilty for the murder of her roommate Anita Knutson in 2007.

The jury began deliberating Tuesday afternoon, and were sent home for the evening around 7:30 p.m. The jury reconvened at 9 a.m. Wednesday, and reached a verdict an hour later. In total, the jury deliberated for just shy of five and half hours.

District Court Judge Richard Hagar asked the jury leader to confirm they reached a verdict. As the court clerk read out the not guilty verdict, Rice, her attorneys, family and friends erupted with emotion and embraced each other. Rice was in tears while Hagar restored order to the courtroom and closed the hearing. Knutson’s family left the courtroom after the verdict was read.

Knutson’s sister Anna Knutson-Toedter reacted to the verdict on social media Wednesday afternoon, which she authorized for use by The Minot Daily News.

Anita Knutson

“I spent the last week reliving some of the hardest parts of the last 18 years of my life, and in those 18 years one thing I’ve learned is that a not guilty verdict does not mean innocence. I cannot say the same for many of the people in that room, but my conscience is clear,” Knutson-Toedter’s post said.

The verdict came after seven days of testimony from more than 20 witnesses for a trial that came nearly 18 years after Knutson was found dead in her apartment in Minot and three years after Rice was arrested and charged with her roommate’s murder.

The State’s case detailed the early days of the investigation into Knutson’s death, which went 15 years without producing a single arrest. New investigators with the Minot Police Department were brought onto the case in 2019, and were given support through the involvement of “Cold Justice,” a true crime documentary series.

Interim Minot Police Chief Dale Plessas, who was the first officer at the murder scene in 2007, indicated in his testimony last week that the MPD had struggled to close the cold case due to staffing issues and increased crime rates in Minot after the Souris River flood and the Bakken oil boom.

Plessas said the “Cold Justice” investigators provided logistical support, and aided investigators during interviews as they honed in on a suspect, which ultimately was Rice.

Rice’s attorney Richard Sand cast doubt on the intentions of the “Cold Justice” team during his closing arguments on Tuesday, saying their involvement influenced and pressured the MPD to charge his client.

“This TV show comes to town, and we’re getting charges. They came to town for seven days. They’re telling you in their closing that the Minot Police Department is so busy they can’t get things right,” Sand said. “The show came in, it had an agenda. That agenda was to get Nichole in that chair right there, cause that’s what gets people watching these things. They don’t care who did this. They care about who is watching that TV.”

Sand took the State’s case and the Minot Police Department to task for a variety of missing elements of the case file, and other loose ends not pursued by investigators that he argued pointed toward alternative suspects like Devin Hall. The defense called a single witness to testify, a former FBI agent James Douglas Kouns, who gave lengthy testimony of his analysis of the case file and a number of other persons of interest ruled out by MPD investigators.

“I’m going through 7,000 pages in my head to make sure they understand what happened, because they didn’t do the work. The investigation happened here. The investigation happened with agent Kouns. They didn’t review the file. They said that. That’s insane to put someone in that chair for murder without reviewing the file,” Sand said.

Sand also called into question testimony from individuals who said Rice confessed to committing the murder while drunk at parties in 2008, which were one of the linchpins of the State’s case.

“The TV show comes out, and the phone starts ringing. You have two people who all of a sudden have an admission, an alleged admission, ‘I did it.’ Everyone’s black out drunk at a party, ‘I did it,'” Sands said. “They get in touch with each other prior to talking to the police after the show comes out, and they say, ‘Yeah, we reported this multiple times back in 2008.’ This is one of the biggest murder cases in North Dakota history and the cops just ignored that? No, this is another load of crap.”

Rice gathered with family, legal team and supporters outside the courthouse in Grand Forks following the verdict for a prayer before leaving.

Rice and her attorneys did not respond to a request for comment from The Minot Daily News following the verdict.

Plessas, who is also the MPD investigations commander, did not respond to comment on the fate of the investigation into Knutson’s murder.