There will not be a new trial for a 37-year-old Blue Earth woman convicted of perjury.
Instead, she’ll be doing some jail time.
Judge Troy Timmerman sentenced Allison Ann Mastin to 30 days in the Faribault County Jail after denying attorney Gary Gittus’s motion for a new trial at a hearing held March 9.
Mastin will be given four days credit for time already served and has been ordered to report by 7 p.m. on March 28.
In issuing his ruling, Timmerman rejected Gittus’ arguments that his client did not receive a fair trial because her constitutional rights were violated and that assistant County Attorney LaMar Piper acted improperly by meeting with witness Wyatt Tungland two days before the start of the trial.
Gittus says Piper never shared information he obtained from Tungland, whose involvement in the assault of a Blue Earth Area football teammate is linked to his client’s case.
In court documents, Piper says that Mastin’s conviction is for what she said during Tungland’s omnibus hearing in July 2018, not for his testimony at the trial.
Piper says that Mastin changes her story on whether she knew if Tungland was at her residence the night of the assault at a Winnebago residence.
Tungland never told investigators, says Piper, that he was at Mastin’s house at any time the night of the assault.
Mastin was placed on supervised probation for two years and fined $1,085, which can be paid by working on Sentence-To-Serve (STS) crews.
In addition, she must abstain from the use of mood-alerting chemicals; complete a chemical dependency assessment; be subjected to random drug testing; give DNA samples as directed; work 40 hours on STS; cannot possess firearms, ammunition or explosives; and cannot vote.
Mastin has other legal issues she has been dealing with, a DWI charge and domestic assault.
On March 2, she pleaded guilty to third-degree driving while impaired and was sentenced.
Mastin has pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor domestic assault, which reportedly occurred while she was on trial for perjury. A jury trial has been scheduled for May 7.